summary paper - Alliance of Religions and Conservation

Marja­Liisa Swantz
Professor Emerita, University of Helsinki, Finland:
‘Religion, Gender and Development’
Introductory thoughts
I have worked over fifty years closely with grassroots engaged in participatory research and practice and
as a development critic and practitioner, mostly in Tanzania. I started by teaching the first generation of
certified women teachers on Mt. Kilimanjaro, did five years participatory village research on the coast and
then have developed and practiced Participatory Action Research with colleagues and villagers in various
parts of the country. My present involvement is within North­South local government co­operation
between a Finnish municipality and a Tanzanian district.
In my intervention I relate first to such African traditional form of life, which respected life and helped to
conserve plants and forests, and in particular women’s part in it. I go on to discuss the women’s dilemma
in more generalized terms and end relating thoughts to institutionalized Christian religion.
I have followed development from bottom up in areas, which in statistical terms have been listed as the
poorest and most backward in Tanzania. From that perspective the terminology and theory of sustainable
development looks very different from the prevailing economic view to development. I argue that women’s
view to their own life situation does not fit into the policies and strategies promoted for those who in
statistical terms are counted poor, nor even into the vocabulary of poverty reduction.
Tanzanian women as a category are not the poorest of the poor even if we recognise that the number of
wealthy women is small. The educated women’s situation has changed radically in 50 years. At the time
of independence there were no women with an academic degree, yet today 45 years later six women are
government ministers and the President of the African Union Parliament is a Tanzanian woman. Women
have long had posts as Principle Secretaries in the Government Ministries, they head several of the
important government offices and are professors in the universities. A woman professor is also the
Director of the Institute of Development Studies. In terms of education Tanzania has made great
advancements.
The Millennium Development Goals promise poverty reduction and for women promotion of their rights.
The way the economy of communities living on one dollar a day is conceived and measured does not fit
the reality of those communities. We face the same problem also when the external environmentalists
meet the common villagers. The built­in contradictions hinder true uplifting of the world’s population,
whether they are contradictions of belief, knowledge or economy. Common people’s knowledge and
wisdom are by­passed and the way domestic economy works is ignored. The systems and structures, to
which the bureaucratic officialdom and scientific methodology are bound, lack tools, time and willingness
to penetrate into the reality of people.
Learning from traditions and history
I relate the issue first briefly to women’s role in traditional society and ask whether it is conceivable that
people can fetch ideas and relate to practices from the disappearing traditions, As the writers of the book
Making of Tradition show, traditions even in Europe have been discovered and revived conveniently to
strengthen national identity and even commerce. (Ranger, T. & E. Hobsbaum) There are signs that this is
beginning to happen also in Africa. 8
In the Tanzanian coastal societies maturing girls were secluded for long periods of time. The practice still
continues in some form but the universal primary education has brought it into conflict. Both boys’ and
girls’ rituals had aspects, which related to our topic. Rituals symbolised regeneration, passage through
death to life. Much of the symbolism was derived from nature, plants, animals and insects, which were
used as metaphors, showed people’s close knowledge of their qualities and living habits. Rubbish was
swept on to the edges of dwellings where it decomposed and regenerated, there also medicine men and
women were initiated gaining regenerating power. With the coming of dead substances, tins and plastics,
the process of regeneration died and people were at a loss to know what to do with them..
8
One must hope that this trend is not commercialized. The development of museums and the Department of
Antiquities have been placed under the Ministry of Tourism.
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