One of the questions on the exams I have been grading is "Do you think the overall affect of ICT on society has been positive or negative? Discuss." (I believe if I have to grade essays I should at least ask questions I'm mildly interested in hearing opinions about.) One of the students wrote that it leads to gender segregation because people think computers are only for men and the youth, but computers are really for all of us. That made me smile.
Like everywhere in the world (once we made it through the 1950s), the field of computing in Tanzania is largely dominated by men. Tanzania in general is, of course, dominated by men, but there are some fields where one can find a lot of women. There are other departments at this college with a lot more women than the ICT department, which has, besides me, one and I don't see her very often. Since quite a few of the 9 ICT teachers here are university students from Dar doing there internship and there's a high turnover, one might expect temporary women teachers dropping in, but I have yet to see any.
I was questioned about this recently. It seems to be more or less accepted that I can sit with my laptop typing, but if I actually do anything hardware related, it causes great comment, and oh my Turing, the fascination that ensues over my ability to use a screwdriver.
I was asked about it by a Tanzanian government official why there aren't more women in ICT at this teacher's college, and as usual when queried by Tanzanians on questions about culture I'm not entirely prepared to answer in English much less Kiswahili, I responded with "I'm not sure, why do you think that is?" He gave the usual response that women make different choices from men. Sigh.
I really dislike the "women just make different choices" method of justifying gender segregation, since it ignores underlying factors, as, for example, a Tanzanian culture in which there is really strong pressure on women to marry, have children, and do all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, water-toting, farming, etc.
As a side note, I am a ripped aerialist and I am in awe of Tanzanian women. Washing water in a bucket and cooking over charcoal (or kerosene, actually, since I have never been able to light a charcoal jiko without my neighbors coming over with coals and talking about what an idiot and bad cook I am right in front of me because they think I don't understand and I hate that) is hard, water is really heavy, I don't even try to farm, and cleaning my floors is kind of a big deal, because they are cement and I have to dump soapy water over them and squeegee it all off, and this is a really big house. The Tanzanian women do all of this, usually way more than me, and they somehow have jobs and spend their chai breaks going home to breastfeed and don't seem to get tired. I am tired all the time, and mostly all I do is just my job.
Also, in Tanzanian culture women and men don't tend to hang together that much. Even in as progressive an area as Morogoro (men and women who aren't lovers hold hands! In public!) I can still go to a man's house for dinner and his wife stays in the kitchen and brings food out and serves us, because as a white woman expert from the US I seem to count as a man in social situations, which I think confuses everyone including me.
The weirdest thing I think about gender segregation here is that the culture says it is not safe for women to walk alone at night but it is for men, even though as a general thing Tanzanian women are larger than Tanzanian men. in despite of women not liking to exercise their bodies (according to a 19 year old girl, at any rate.) Of course, bigger here is more beautiful, so women encourage their daughters to eat, but not their sons. Due to the food situation this has a real and dramatic effect. I am as large or more so than quite a few Tanzanian men. For purposes of scale I am 5 foot 3 and usually around 120lbs. And yet it is safe for a man a head shorter than me to walk alone at night, but I get lectures on safety. What gives?
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