Abstract

The issue of insufficient schooling for women in Tanzania is major and complex. Its magnitude has largely been disguised by an ideological rhetoric on social equality through which women's differing experiences across geographical, ethnic, class, gender, and religious boundaries are falsely homogenized. This problem requires a critical examination, in which multiple obstacles women face during their schooling process in Tanzania can emerge. Crucial to this kind of analysis is the identification of landmarks, or locations, on which conventional and unconventional institutions discursively construct women's identities and formulate their subjectivity (Smith, in Mohanty et al 1991). Such an identification is important, given the current structure of Tanzania's society in which dominant socio-economic classes, political groups, and men can easily exploit and oppress subordinate groups of people, and deny women any meaningful academic participation and achievement (Kelly & Elliott, 1982; Grabb 1990). The critical nature of this analysis stems from a recognition of the interrelationships which exists between the notion of "politics of location" and discursive practices in the process of the construction of identities and formation of subjectivity. Questions surrounding the concept of identity in relation to the formation of subjectivity are, therefore, central to the examination of women's access to resources and their right to opportunity, whether socio-economic, cultural or political. In turn, the differing degrees and right to their access indicate the diversity of the problems and magnitude each woman faces during her schooling process. This analysis borrows from dialectical and critical models developed by such classical sociological theorists as Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim, and along with ideas from other contemporary perspectives, feminist theorists, colonial and post-colonial discourses. Ideas developed by these scholars to analyze the problem of social inequality provide the critical means to look at and understand this problem. They are, therefore, central to the development of a theoretical design for the examination of obstacles to women's participation in education in Tanzania. Post-colonial Tanzania has recognized formal education as the main toot for developing various talents and converting them into conventional specialties; but the socio-economic, cultural and political obstacles examined in this research have been perennial obstacles to women's meaningful academic achievement in Tanzania. This dissertation has been designed to help a critical thinker, and diligent woman penetrate falsely smoothened surfaces of unconventional and conventional institutions, in order to understand what each of them contribute to both enable and minimize women's participation in post-colonial education in Tanzania. Despite all the challenges that have been directed against the educational system in Tanzania, it is important to understand that efforts by the government to eradicate discriminatory educational policies introduced during colonialism, especially Mwl. Nyerere's contribution to women's liberation in Tanzania, are strongly recognized and saluted. They reflect great minds of our political leaders on crucial issues confronting human development. This work, while basically meant for women in Tanzania, might be valuable for anyone because it offers a suggested guide for a meaningful struggle towards many types of achievement including education. It is also significant for those whose academic life was prematurely ended because it provides a means for reviving academic desire, energy, and hope for academic success. It can also be used as a guide for policy decision-makers, especially around issues concerning women's liberation because it reveals some of the critical problems preventing women from succeeding academically, and in their lives in general.