Africa, Headlines

GENDER-TANZANIA: Women Leaders Face Triple Roles

Assumpta Massoi

Mar 7 2000 (IPS) - Tanzania’s women leaders say their daily lives are faced with a triple challenge – that of production, reproduction and community management.

The tripe role challenge will be the focus of the International Women’s Day discussions on Wednesday. This year’s theme is ‘Women and Leadership’.

Professor Mwajabu Possi, Principal of Tanzania’s School of Journalism says a woman can only break the ceiling and take up a leadership position if she has the full support of her family.

“We are constantly hearing of cases of women giving up their jobs or studies because they lack support from their families,” she says.

Professor Possi, an educationalist and expert in special education, says for her, balancing the roles has been a bit easier because of support from her family.

“At least my husband and my children know and understand what I have to do so if there are ever family things to attend to and I have an official issue pressing my husband will say ‘just finish deal with your work first and we will go later’. This attitude and support has made all the difference to my life,” she says.

Edda Sanga, Deputy Director of Broadcasting of Radio Tanzania in Dar es salaam says balancing the triple roles should not be viewed negatively but should be seen by women as a challenge.

“However I admit that it can be very difficult and in my case I sometimes feel guilty that I spend too much time working and I feel as if the development of children will suffer because of this, especially if they don’t prgoress as well as I would like them to in school.

“It is difficult to balance a family with a successful career because both of them require a demanding schedule and time,” she says.

Sanga who attributes her current position to confidence and hard work, says one way to succeed is to engender a team spirit at your workplace whereby you are able to delegate work to others.

She says often, in a desire to prove themselves as being totally focused and efficient, women tend to take too much work onto themselves.

“You cannot be in a top position and do all the work yourself. You have to assign tasks to others and delegate. The key to management is to identify a team who can do the job while you manage. It makes all the difference and allows you to balance your time more carefully,” she says.

However Sanga says a major problem that women managers or leaders face is being accepted in these positions by male colleagues.

“It is a bit difficult especially with male counterparts. they have a tendency of saying ‘she is just a woman’ and treat you as such,” says Sanga.

She says often women react negatively to this attitude and tend to alienate their subordinates. “I think the best way to deal with such negativity is to try and get them on board by making their job more participatory as opposed to your ordering them to do things and their just following your orders. Engenering a team spirit is important.

“If I conduct a meeting, I tell them what is it for, we discuss issues together, plan and work together to implement. This gives them confidence in me because I make them participate in whatever I do,” says Sanga who is also the Controller of programmes for the country’s state-run broadcaster.

Tanzania has been in the forefront of ensuring that women are provided equal professional opportunities.

The country currently has three full women ministers, three deputy ministers and one regional commissioner.

However, gender activists say this number is still very low considering that females make up 50 percent of the population of this East African nation.

Rahma Ahmed Othman a regional police commander in the south- eastern region of Mtwara says women who want to be leaders have to find ways of balancing child bearing with their work.

She says there are various family planning programmes available in the country which, if followed, can help women plan their lives and balance them and have more control of their different roles.

“I planned my life and am now very comfortable and have done well,” says Othman, who is the only female regional police commander out of 25 regional police chiefs in the country.

According to Professor Possi the only way women can take up more leadership roles in the country is to work hard, maintain a high level of professional ethics, work together with their male counterparts and not against them and continue to upgrade their educational levels and skills.

She said women also had to demand more cooperation from men with regards to taking care of the family. Attitudes had to change and families had to be run by both parents.

“The problem with us women is that we think we are the best care takers of our children, and that staying away from the family, is like depriving their young ones their rights to be with their mothers.

We have to do away with this emotional guilt trip otherwise we will not go far. We have to believe men are as good parents as women and that children require our quality time and not all of our time,” she says.

 
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