International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume VI, Issue VI, June 2022 | ISSN 2454–6186
Paternalistic dominance: a system of social relations that controls women in Tanzania
Ludovick Myumbo
St. Augustine University of Tanzania
Abstract: Participatory narrative inquiry (PNI) was used to a group of six young women to create a space to recount their lived experiences. This was import given that women in some societies in Tanzania are socialized to accept a lesser status than their counterparts in exchange for protection and privilege, forming a relationship that is likened to paternalistic dominance. Regrettably, such gendered relations dominate and diminish women’s opportunities for self-actualization and wellbeing. At the end, a call is made to effectively challenge and dismantle a system that controls and dominates women and nature.
Key terms: Paternalistic, gender relations, gender inequality, women, livelihoods
I. INTRODUCTION
While cautions are made against a single-cause explanation, patriarchy is generally described as a system that creates gender inequality and allows subordination of women (Lerner, 1986: 53; Walby, 1990). In this regard, Christ (2016: 214) provides a multipronged definition of patriarchy as:
A system of male dominance, rooted in the ethos of war which legitimates violence, sanctified by religious symbols, in which men dominate women through the control of female sexuality, with the intent of passing property to male heirs, and in which men who are heroes of war are told to kill men, and are permitted to rape women, to seize land and treasures, to exploit resources, and to own or otherwise dominate conquered people.
What is important in this definition is that patriarchy is a system that controls and dominates women and nature. This outlook of patriarchy departs from the usual value-laden, monolithic and ideologically determined discourses that focus on individual men who dominate women and nature (Kandiyoti, 1988: 274–275; Walby, 1990: 20). It rather anchors the control and domination of women in social contexts, relations or conditions (a set of structured and institutionalized social relations ) than in individual attributes designed by individual men (Hunnicutt, 2009: 553). Thus the patriarchy that is depicted here is less as a single structure and more as an event which unfolds within a much wider