PATTERNS OF CHANGE: PROMOTING FEMINISM IN RURAL TANZANIA
Tanzanian legislation for women’s rights is a product of decades of indigenous women’s struggles and considered amongst the most progressive in Africa. However, implementation has been problematic and some elements in the current discourse appear to push back against gender equality with an essentialist framing of women and men as naturally different This study on the, women rural communities in different regions of Tanzania, to build an understanding of how they perceive gender equality, and how their perceptions relate to decision-making, women earning incomes, women as homemakers, and control over assets. Understanding feminist as a performance contextualise analysis through a historical overview of women’s struggles to secure rights since colonial times to the present day. that local discourse appears to embrace the idea of gender; practice remains quite different with the threat of sanctions restricting the scope for re-negotiation of gender. The paper demonstrates how the continuous performance, reproduction and renegotiation of feminist takes place as part of patterns of change.
Keywords: Patterns of Change, Promoting Feminism