Chapter 7

“These Are Not Our Priorities”:

Maasai Women, Human Rights,
and the Problem of Culture

Dorothy L. Hodgson

“MWEDO urged to step up fight against female genital mutilation,” read the
headline in the Arusha Times, a weekly newspaper in northern Tanzania (Au-
gust 19–26, 2006). Since Tanzania made female genital modification (FGM)1
illegal in 1998, there have been constant articles in the English and Swahili
language press outlining the dangers of FGM, announcing yet another cam-
paign to stop it, praising the successful eradication efforts of local, national
and international women’s organizations, and lamenting the stubborn persis-
tence of the practice among certain ethnic groups, most notably Maasai.2 So
as one of the two main NGOs working with Maasai women, it seemed only
natural (to the national press and most Tanzanians) that MWEDO (Maasai
Women’s Development Organization) would join the fight to eradicate FGM.
But the fact that MWEDO was being “urged” suggests that the organiza-
tion was somehow slow or reluctant to get involved in the FGM campaigns.
And, indeed, it was. Most Maasai women leaders, including the leaders of
MWEDO, have tried to resist demands to focus their efforts and resources on
eradicating FGM, insisting instead on the need to address a different set of
priorities and human rights—namely, economic and political empowerment.
The differences between the agendas of MWEDO and those of the domi-
nant Tanzanian society (who Maasai call “Swahili”), including prominent na-
tional and transnational women’s organizations, on the matter of FGM point
 “These Are Not Our Priorities” 139

to larger tensions over culture, power, and human rights. As international

campaigns to end the practice of FGM have shifted from framing the practice
as a health concern to a human rights violation in order to justify their inter-
ventions (Shell-Duncan 2008), they have broadened and intensified the pres-
sure on “grassroots” organizations like MWEDO to join forces. Moreover,
both the health and human rights frameworks have downplayed the history
and complicated cultural and social meanings of the practice for societies
like Maasai, condemning FGM outright as a “traditional oppressive practice,”
a “harmful cultural practice,” and, now, a form of violence against women (cf.
Hernlund and Shell-Duncan 2007). Simultaneously, cultural rights have be-
come an increasing focus of the international indigenous rights movement,
which Maasai, like several other pastoralist and hunter-gather societies in
Africa, have joined. Thus, as Maasai women have formed their own NGOs
over the past ten years, they have had to navigate an often contradictory path
between the women’s rights movement and the indigenous rights movement.
Although both are derived from international human rights legislation, they
assume, invoke, deploy, and advocate very different ideas of culture, gender,
power, identity, social change, and citizenship. These tensions become starkly
apparent in debates over FGM and development priorities, where ideas of
“culture” and the proper roles, responsibilities, and rights of men and women
often contrast sharply. Do indigenous women then invoke their rights as
“women” or as “indigenous people”? What ideas of “progress” and visions
of the future do they advocate? This chapter explores the history, objectives,
agendas, and practices of MWEDO in order to probe how it has negotiated
the differences, and often contradictions, in the assumptions, meanings, and
practices of each social movement. My purpose is not to explore the practice
and meaning of FGM for Maasai women and men, which I have done else-
where (Hodgson 2001a, 2005), nor to trace the history of campaigns against
FGM (Boyle 2002) or for “women’s rights as human rights” (which Merry
2006, among others, does very well; see also Hodgson 2003). Rather, I seek to
analyze the consequences, or “perils and pitfalls” (Shell-Duncan 2008), of the
international anti-FGM campaign and the larger “problem of culture” for the
agendas and struggles of Maasai women leaders, activists, and community
members, especially now that FGM has been reframed as a human rights
issue.
Exploring the consequences of the reframing of FGM as a human rights
issue for the lives of African women is important for several reasons. The
chapter contributes to a growing body of feminist scholarship that explores
140 Dorothy L. Hodgson

the limits of a human rights approach to gender justice. Clearly the inclu-
sion of women’s rights as human rights has helped women throughout the
world challenge oppressions of various kinds (e.g., Hodgson 2003; Merry
2006; Agosín 2001; Hesford and Kozol 2005). But such rights-based ap-
proaches to justice, with their assumptions about privileging the individual
and the power of secular law, often make it difficult to recognize and address
the structural causes and context of gender injustice, such as the disman-
tling of health care, education, and other social services and deepening im-
poverishment produced by the adoption and implementation of neoliberal
policies and practices. Moreover, “culture” is often depicted as an obstacle to
“progress,” thereby, at times, undermining women’s power and autonomy by
ignoring cultural practices and beliefs that serve to empower women, while
stigmatizing others, like FGM, that are often central to rites of passage or
ritual transformations. But, as the chapter will show, the “problem of culture”
is really a problem of power—of the continued assumption by many Euro-
American donors and activists, and, increasingly, by African elites, that they
can speak for (rather than listen to) rural, poorly educated women or even
well-educated African women who are deemed culturally “other.” Even if we
acknowledge the interconnection of all rights (including economic, political,
cultural), the question still remains as to who decides which rights to pursue
at any given time.

Becoming Indigenous Women

Since the late 1980s, growing numbers of historically marginalized minority

groups in Africa, such as Maasai in Kenya and Tanzania and !Kung San in
Namibia and South Africa, have come to identify with and join the transna-
tional indigenous rights movement. These groups have become “indigenous”
to gain international support for their ongoing struggles for political, eco-
nomic, and cultural self-determination within their respective nation-states
(Hodgson 2011, 2009, 2008, 2002b,c; Sylvain 2002; Saugestad 2001). They
have received tremendous financial and logistical support for their efforts
from transnational advocacy groups and donors. They have participated in
ongoing deliberations at the United Nations and in innumerable interna-
tional conferences and workshops to draft, promote, and ratify international
legislation that specifies and supports the rights of indigenous peoples. But
most of these indigenous groups have been organized and led by elite, ed-
 “These Are Not Our Priorities” 141

ucated men, who paid little attention to the concerns and demands of in-
digenous women. Moreover, their elite, male visions of “traditional” culture
often reified, reproduced, and enforced a deeply patriarchal gendered order
(Hodgson 1996, 1999, 2001a).
Simultaneously, increasing numbers of African women have been re-
thinking and rearticulating their political struggles in the new terms provided
by the expanding international “women’s rights as human rights” movement
(Bunch 1990; Schuler 1995; Hodgson 2003). Key events in this transformation
were the UN Decade Conferences for Women in Nairobi (1985) and Beijing
(1995) and the support of transnational feminist organizations, international
human rights organizations, and donors. Although not without limitations,
the language and paradigms of women’s human rights have enabled African
women to develop new strategies to circumvent and reframe enduring de-
bates about women’s empowerment mired in the potent, contradictory terms
of “culture,” “tradition,” and “modernity” (Hodgson 2003; cf. Merry 2006).3
But this movement has also been organized and led by a specific social group,
elite African women, who rarely encouraged the participation of indigenous
women or attention to their rights and needs.
In Tanzania as in other parts of Africa, indigenous women have orga-
nized themselves at the nexus of these two movements into NGOs that work
for economic security and improvement as well as the protection of certain
cultural rights and customs. A transnational indigenous women’s organiza-
tion, the African Indigenous Women’s Organization (AIWO), was instituted
at the First African Indigenous Women’s Conference held in 1998 in Mo-
rocco to link, strengthen and coordinate more localized efforts.4 As the first
continent-wide meeting of indigenous women from Africa, the timing of the
meeting was remarkable for several reasons. First, numerous African women
had been very active in the international women’s rights movement for al-
most 15 years, since the 1985 UN Decade Conference for Women was held in
Nairobi, Kenya and certain long-marginalized African peoples like Maasai
had been participating in the indigenous rights movement for more than a
decade. In fact, Moringe Parkipuny, an educated Maasai man from Tanza-
nia, was the first African to formally address the UN Working Group on In-
digenous Populations in Geneva in 1989 (Parkipuny 1989; see also Hodgson
2009). In addition, indigenous women from other parts of the world such as
the Americas and Australia had been meeting in regional and international
gatherings since the late 1980s and issued several declarations, including the
well-known 1995 Beijing Declaration of Indigenous Women.5 In other words,
142 Dorothy L. Hodgson

the fact that it took until 1998 for indigenous African women to meet marked
their triple marginalization at the time: from the international women’s rights
movement, the indigenous rights movement, and even the indigenous wom-
en’s movement.
Briefly, there were several reasons for their triple marginalization. First,
most of the African women who participated in the NGO Forum that ac-
companied the 1985 UN Decade meeting in Nairobi and those who subse-
quently became active in the international women’s rights movement were
elite, educated urban women—often activists, lawyers, and academics from
dominant ethnic groups. They tended to share the modernist perspectives
of their Western feminist counterparts—that indigenous women like Maasai
lived as victims in patriarchal worlds shaped forcefully by the drudgery of
endless household labor, domestic violence, and primitive “cultural” prac-
tices like polygyny, arranged marriage, and female genital modification (e.g.,
Aina 1998). Indigenous women were associated with “culture” and “tradi-
tion,” precisely the domains the international women’s movement was try-
ing to challenge with its liberal claims to universal human rights and values,
premised on notions of individual agency and autonomy. Indigenous women
could be spoken for and helped, but certainly had little to contribute to the
struggle for women’s advancement. Although similar to the recurring ten-
sions between elite, urban women and uneducated, rural “grassroots” women
described by many authors (e.g., Hodgson 2003) the marginalization of in-
digenous women like Maasai was heightened by their seeming “excess” of
culture.
Second, the structural dismissal of Maasai and other indigenous women
from the international women’s movement was mirrored by the general ex-
clusion of their ideas, concerns, and experiences from the indigenous move-
ment in Africa during this period. In Tanzania, the indigenous movement
quickly grew from just two NGOs formed in 1989 and 1991 to more than 100
by 2000. During the early period, these indigenous NGOs were formed and
run almost exclusively by educated Maasai men considered “junior elders” in
the Maasai age system. Maasai women, with few exceptions, were relegated
to the sidelines in the name of “culture” and “tradition.” A vivid example of
such gender politics occurred at the First Maasai Conference on Culture and
Development, which I attended in 1991 as an “invited observer.” The orga-
nizer, an educated junior male Maasai elder, decided that while the confer-
ence debates were taking place among men in the large hotel meeting room,
Maasai women would display their beaded jewelry and other crafts on the
 “These Are Not Our Priorities” 143

outside balcony as part of a Maasai Women’s Cultural Exhibit. When I ques-

tioned him about this gender divide, he explained that it was part of “Maasai
tradition,” in which women did not participate in political gatherings and
debates. “But when,” I responded, “was a ‘First Maasai Conference on Cul-
ture and Development,’ held in a well-known tourist hotel, ever a ‘traditional’
event’?” During the actual meeting, a few younger, educated Maasai women
participated. And on the last day, the older, mostly illiterate Maasai women
who had been relegated to the balcony to display their crafts walked into the
conference and demanded to know why they had not been included: “Are we
not Maasai?” they asked.6 Not surprisingly, similar dynamics were present
at the global level, where few women participated in the African delegations
attending meetings of indigenous peoples such as the annual UN Working
Group on Indigenous Populations (IWGIA 1998: 319).7
The First African Indigenous Women’s Conference was held, therefore,
to counter this history of triple marginalization, “to [break] through the iso-
lation of indigenous women in Africa” (IWGIA 1998: 320). And by all ac-
counts, it was successful; “for most participants, it was the first occasion to
meet and to share experiences as indigenous women with their sisters from
other regions of Africa. The participants took this opportunity to learn from
each other’s experiences by exchanging stories, information and strategies”
(IWGIA 1999: 347). After several days of discussions and workshops on
the two framing subjects, “the role of African indigenous women as trea-
surers of the cultural and intellectual heritage of their people” and “violence
against African indigenous women” (Van Achterberg 1998: 11), and several
minor subjects (including legal situations, biodiversity, and traditional medi-
cine), the participants decided to form an organization to follow-up on their
discussions—AIWO—and listed seven objectives to serve as AIWO’s initial
mandate. These included “the defense and promotion of the rights and in-
terests of African indigenous women,” protection of indigenous languages
and identities, preservation of indigenous knowledge and natural resources,
prevention of genocide and ethnocide, guarantee of the property rights of
indigenous women, monitoring of sustainable economic development initia-
tives, and organizing training sessions for African indigenous women (Van
Achterberg 1998: 13–14).
With the formation of AIWO, African indigenous women did indeed
come “out of the shadows,” as the report from the First African Indigenous
Women’s Conference was titled (Van Achterberg 1998). Although AIWO it-
self soon confronted the logistical challenges shared by other transnational
144 Dorothy L. Hodgson

networks—including bridging multiple languages,8 an inadequate and ex-

pensive communications infrastructure, scarce resources, and an uncomfort-
able dependence on donor funds and susceptibility to donor agendas—the
formation of the organization brought attention to the energy and issues
of African indigenous women, helped several women achieve international
prominence in the global indigenous rights movement, and prompted other
donors and advocacy groups to demand that all African indigenous orga-
nizations and international indigenous women’s organizations reform their
structures and agendas to include African indigenous women. As a result, in
part, of these changes, increasing numbers of indigenous women’s organiza-
tions were formed at the local level, including MWEDO in Tanzania.

Toward Equal Rights for Women: MWEDO

MWEDO was registered as an NGO in 2000 “to work towards the empower-
ment of disadvantaged Maasai women economically, politically, culturally,
and socially through implementing activities in capacity building, advocacy,
and promotion of human rights within the Maasai community” (MWEDO
2005: 6). In 2006, it described its primary program areas as human rights and
advocacy, household economic empowerment, public services development,
and cultural citizenship. Work was conducted by a staff of five from a central
office in the regional headquarters of Arusha through more than 35 village-
based membership groups spread throughout four of the five so-called “pas-
toralist districts” (Monduli, Simanjiro, Kiteto, Ngorongoro, and Longido).
One of the founders and the first executive director, Ndinini Kimesera
Sikar, is an educated Maasai woman who was taken from her rural Maasai
homestead in Namolog (Kiteto District) as a small child to live with her uncle
in the large city of Dar es Salaam for health reasons. She was educated and
easily assimilated into the guiding norms of urban, elite, “Swahili” society, yet
maintained strong ties with her rural base. After secondary school, she stud-
ied finance and then worked as a banker for several years before marrying an
older Maasai man, moving to Arusha, and helping start MWEDO.
I first met Ndinini at the United Nations in New York in 2004, at the an-
nual meeting of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She was
browsing through a table of pamphlets and posters outside the main assembly
room, dressed in a stunning rendition of customary Maasai dress, with a long
beaded skirt and cloak, headdress, and jewelry. I approached her and greeted
 “These Are Not Our Priorities” 145

her in Maa, which surprised and pleased her. We spoke for a while, then
continued to meet and talk throughout the week-long session. We discussed
many things, including news about mutual friends in Tanzania, her unusual
life as one of the few well-educated Maasai women, MWEDO’s work, and
current policy debates in Tanzania. At the time, Ndinini felt very drawn to
“indigenous rights” as a useful frame for pursuing Maasai political struggles;
“it allows everyone to work together to pressure the Tanzanian state without
making it an ‘ethnic’ or ‘tribal’ issue. But the problem is that everyone has to
get along.” She had only just learned about the UN Permanent Forum at a
recent meeting for East African Pastoralists in Nairobi, and IWGIA, based in
Copenhagen, had sponsored her trip to New York. But she was very disap-
pointed that she was the only representative from Tanzania at the Permanent
Forum that year, in contrast to the many Kenyan Maasai present.
Ndinini has continued to maintain contacts with IWGIA and occasional
involvement in the international indigenous rights movement (including at-
tendance at the 2007 UN Permanent Forum). As evidenced by MWEDO’s
program in “cultural citizenship”9 and use of the Maa language in workshops
and meetings (despite government injunctions that only Swahili be used in
such venues), she seeks to promote and protect Maasai culture and language
in the face of radical social and economic changes. But her primary concern
is with the political and economic empowerment of women. According to
MWEDO’s 2005 five-year strategic plan:

MWEDO was initiated in 1999 by three Maasai women inspired by

the government efforts towards achievement of the goal of sustain-
able and equitable human development. But the patriarchal relations,
attitudes and practices between men and women and between elders
and young in Maasai land prevent these efforts. The women realized
the need for doing something to support the government’s efforts in
transforming and operationalising a qualitative shift in Maasai land
and national development so that gender equality is recognized in
Maasai land. (MWEDO 2005: 4)

As the cover of MWEDO’s brochure states, beneath a picture of a group of

seated Maasai women, “women have equal rights within the society.”
The creation of MWEDO and other local pastoralist women’s NGOs is
timely, given the increasingly dire situation of pastoralists in general and pas-
toralist women in particular. As a nation, Tanzania has not only embraced
146 Dorothy L. Hodgson

the Millennium Development Goals, but set out an even more ambitious set
of goals in two key policy documents: Tanzania Vision 2025 (which outlines
a “new economic and social vision for Tanzania,” including good quality
lives for all, good governance, and a competitive, neoliberal economy); and
MKUKUTA (the 2005 Poverty Reduction Strategy Proposal). Although both
discuss the need to direct resources and thought toward overcoming perva-
sive economic inequalities among Tanzanians, neither addresses the specific
social, cultural, or economic needs of pastoralists, who currently number
more than 1,000,000 of a population of over 34 million (including Maasai,
Sukuma, and Barabaig). Moreover, the strong neoliberal assumptions and
goals of both documents, and recent related sectoral policy initiatives, sug-
gest a bleak outlook for pastoralists as their land, livestock and livelihoods
come under increasing threat from national and international economic in-
terests. Under pressure from the World Bank, IMF, and northern countries
to meet global demands for increased competition, the Tanzanian govern-
ment has privatized key industries, revised land regulations to encourage the
sale and alienation of land, promoted large-scale commercial agriculture, ex-
panded the highly profitable wildlife tourism and big-game hunting sectors,
instituted service fees for health care (primary school fees were instituted
then revoked), withdrawn support for education and other social services,
and encouraged pastoralists to replace transhumant pastoralism with more
“productive” and less “environmentally harmful” modes of livestock “farm-
ing” (as opposed to “herding”), such as ranches. As a result, there has been
increased alienation of pastoralist lands (especially drought and dry season
grazing land), competition for water sources and other livestock-related re-
sources, decline in the use of health facilities, and increased impoverishment
(Hodgson 2001a, 2008, 2011). As pastoralism becomes less economically vi-
able, growing numbers of pastoralist men have left their homesteads to seek
work as miners or guards and laborers in towns like Arusha and Dar es Sa-
laam (May 2002; May and Ikayo 2007).
Pastoralist women are often now the de facto heads of household, al-
though their increased workloads and responsibilities are rarely matched
by increased rights and decision-making control. Historical evidence sug-
gests that Maasai gender relations were complementary: each gender-age
category had distinct roles, responsibilities, and rights, all of which had to
be accomplished successfully for their households and homesteads to pros-
per (Hodgson 2001a). In addition to childcare, cooking, and other domestic
duties, adult women shared use and access rights to family herds with their
 “These Are Not Our Priorities” 147

husbands, traveled widely to barter livestock products for food and other
household goods, managed disputes among women and influenced the po-
litical decisions of male leaders, and were recognized as the moral authori-
ties (Hodgson 2001a, 2005). Over the past hundred years or so, however, as
resources like land and livestock have become commoditized, men have been
targeted as political leaders, household “heads,” and livestock “owners” by
first colonial then postcolonial authorities; and women’s moral authority and
spiritual significance have been dismissed; pastoralist women have occupied
increasingly vulnerable and dependent positions in their households and
homesteads.10 They now hold only limited rights to livestock, lack inheritance
rights and significant decision-making power, and have few ways to earn
cash. Yet they are increasingly responsible for feeding and caring for their
children, including paying any school fees or health care costs. Very few are
literate or speak Swahili, the national language.11
The precarious position of pastoralist families, especially pastoralist
women and girls, has been exacerbated by the disproportionate impact of
neoliberal economic policies on pastoralists’ access to quality education and
health services, among other sectors.12 In 2000, for example, while 78 percent
of children were enrolled in primary school nationally, only 8 percent of eli-
gible children were enrolled in Monduli District, a large district comprised
of mainly pastoralist Maasai. Moreover, the ratio of boys to girls in primary
school in Monduli District in 2005 was 222 boys for every 100 girls, as com-
pared to the national average of 98 boys to 100 girls (MWEDO 2006: 7; URT
2006). The discrepancy when attendance and completion data is considered
is even more marked: in Simanjiro District in 2003, there were a total of 2,759
boys and 2,115 girls enrolled in Standard I, as compared to only 729 boys and
527 girls in Standard VII—a dramatic decline suggesting a completion rate
of approximately 26 percent (Simanjiro District Report 2005: Table 38). In
terms of secondary school, pass rates on the national exams are much lower
in the pastoralist districts than the national average of 22 percent, and the
stark lack of secondary schools in pastoralist districts (in 2005 there were two
in Simanjiro, two in Kiteto, four in Monduli, and four in Ngorongoro, com-
pared to 22 in neighboring Arumeru District, which is densely populated
with settled farmers), means that the few pastoralist children who pass the
exam and obtain secondary school placements must attend boarding schools
far from home.
Health indicators in pastoralist districts are severely underreported, in
part because they do not include deaths outside health facilities. Traditional
148 Dorothy L. Hodgson

birth attendants assist about 90 percent of deliveries, and few report maternal
or infant deaths to health centers (Simanjiro District Report 2005). More-
over, Mother-Child Health (MCH) clinics are not offered at all health facili-
ties, decreasing the likelihood of referrals and routine data collection. The
recent introduction of fees for health services (except for MCH clinics, which
are supposed to be free) and escalating costs of medicines have created fur-
ther barriers to health care for poor pastoralist women and their children,
who must often ask their husbands for money. Even those who try to use
the health system face innumerable challenges and frustrations, including
absent doctors, cancelled clinics, and lack of medicines. Many women must
still travel long distances for more than rudimentary health care, such as in
difficult pregnancies and deliveries, further contributing to maternal and in-
fant mortality.
The top causes of morbidity and mortality in pastoralist districts are ma-
laria, pneumonia, diarrhea, and tuberculosis. While the national average in
2004 for under five and maternal mortality was 126 children per 1,000 births
and 1,500 per 100,000 respectively, research and experience suggests that
these figures are substantially higher (and seriously underreported) in pasto-
ralist districts.13 Pastoralists are at a significant disadvantage because of their
remote, dispersed locations. For example, in 2007 there was only one health
facility per 780 square kilometers in Ngorongoro District, versus one per 31
square kilometers in Arumeru District (Arusha Regional Commissioners
Office 2009). Even today, there is a notable lack of health centers and hos-
pitals, with only three serving the five pastoralist districts. These difficulties
are further magnified by the poor roads and lack of reliable transportation in
these districts.
To date, MWEDO has pursued three primary strategies to promote wom-
en’s empowerment and equality in the context of their increasingly difficult
lives. First and foremost, MWEDO has worked to strengthen the economic
capacity, income, and autonomy of women through providing small start-
up grants for group income-generating projects and training on how to keep
accounts, run small businesses, and market their products. Many MWEDO
groups, like those in Longido and Kimokowa, have used the money to start
projects that produce beaded jewelry, ornaments, and other items for the tour-
ist market. Others have purchased goats and even cattle to raise and sell for a
profit. These projects are not without their problems (especially how to market
beaded crafts to transient tourists in a flooded domestic and international mar-
ket), but Maasai women, as discussed below, have clamored to get involved.14
 “These Are Not Our Priorities” 149

Secondly, MWEDO has supported the education of pastoralist girls in

secondary school and beyond through provision of full financial support for
tuition, room, board, and other needs, including a year of “pre-form I” train-
ing15 where necessary. In 2005 45 girls were supported, selected by commit-
tees from all the “pastoralist” districts based on school performance, exam
scores, teachers’ recommendations, and financial need. Funds have come
from donors but also Maasai community members; MWEDO has met with
community members and leaders, both men and women, to convince them
of the need to educate Maasai girls and encourage them to contribute to the
Pastoralist Girls Education Fund. In 2005, they organized a huge community-
based fund-raising campaign for the Education Fund involving ilaigwenak
(leaders of male age-sets), women leaders, politicians, and others. By August
2006, they had received over 6 million shillings (approximately $5,000) in
contributions and pledges.
Finally, MWEDO has conducted workshops and awareness raising ses-
sions on aspects of women’s rights. In 2005, these included a large, USAID-
sponsored workshop on human rights and democracy designed to educate
women about their legal and political rights, including their right to vote (in
preparation for the 2005 national presidential and parliamentary elections); a
series of workshops about HIV/AIDs (which MWEDO framed as a women’s
right issue, as in their right to know how to protect their own bodies and
decide who would be their sexual partner); and numerous training sessions
with different member groups on land rights, livestock policies, legal rights
(including marriage, divorce, and inheritance), and other relevant economic
and political issues. Workshop participants were primarily uneducated Maa-
sai women from rural areas, ranging from elderly grandmothers to young,
nursing mothers.
Focus group discussions, individual interviews, and informal conversa-
tions with MWEDO members in 2005 and 2006 suggest that they enthusi-
astically support MWEDO’s initiatives. One older woman explained to me,
“before we stayed home and waited for men, we were dependent on them for
everything. But now we go out and support ourselves.” “In the past,” another
woman interjected, “women had no cattle, but now we do.” Older women
were also avid supporters of providing secondary education to their daugh-
ters. “Papers have gotten heavy,” noted a delegate to the 2006 MWEDO An-
nual General Meeting, “we can’t understand them. Pastoralist women are far
behind. We need education and MWEDO has helped.” Or as another com-
mented, “I really want girls to study. In the past they were married/sold off
150 Dorothy L. Hodgson

[kuozwa] and then some returned home because their husbands had no prop-
erty. Then they became burdens to their fathers. But now they can support
themselves.” When one of the male delegates to the Annual General Meeting
suggested that MWEDO also fund the education of Maasai boys, “Nanyore,”
a younger female member of the MWEDO Board of Directors replied:

MWEDO does not discriminate against boys. But because of the his-
tory of discrimination against girls, it has decided to help girls. We
women are mothers of both girls and boys. But if a father has cattle,
he uses it to educate boys. That is why Munka, Brown and others are
here [referring to older Maasai men who were members of the Board
of Directors]. Why are there no older educated women here? The
money MWEDO is given is for educating Maasai girls. We would en-
courage men to start their own education fund—you have the money
and ability, but we’ll work with you.

Nanyore has herself benefited from MWEDO’s education initiatives. As

the fifth of six wives of an older man, mother of four, with only a primary
school education, she decided several years ago that she was finished having
children and wanted more education, including learning English, leadership,
and computer skills so that she could work with an NGO. Moreover, dis-
gusted with the poor performance of local political leaders, she decided to
compete in the election for ward councilor—and won. She is now a respected
politician and community leader who carefully navigates the demands of her
husband and family and her ambitions for economic security and personal
advancement.
In interviews conducted throughout Maasai areas with women (both
MWEDO members and nonmembers), they expressed the same urgent
needs: hunger, poverty, lack of clean accessible water, and, for many, lack
of functioning, affordable health facilities. (Men echoed many of the same
needs in my interviews with them.) No one mentioned female genital modi-
fication (FGM), polygyny, or even arranged marriage as priorities for change.
The issue of “culture” was, however, raised at the Annual General Meeting in
a fierce debate about cultural authenticity, exploitation, and protection. One
woman described an incident in which a donor group visited, took a lot of
pictures, and claimed they would help—but never followed through. Several
women and men discussed the issue of Maasai clothing—how other ethnic
groups wore it at weddings and such, or even to make claims to donors that
 “These Are Not Our Priorities” 151

they were Maasai. But when, for example, Maasai men wore shirts and pants,
they were accused of no longer being Maasai. “I am wearing a t-shirt,” pro-
claimed a younger man, “does that make me not Maasai?” Only one woman
raised the issue of FGM: “What about the problem of circumcision [kuta-
hiri]? It is part of our culture, but the government says don’t do it. What do
we do now?” No one responded, but many shook their heads, and several
muttered about the recent vehemence of government sponsored anti-FGM
campaigns.

Whose Priorities?

Ironically, although MWEDO propounds a fairly typical agenda of political

and economic initiatives to support women’s empowerment in which cul-
tural issues are in the background, donors and mainstream feminist groups in
Tanzania foreground Maasai “culture” in their interactions and assessments
of MWEDO’s work. Two examples suffice. The first involves MWEDO’s rela-
tionship with one of their main international donors, which has an office in
Dar es Salaam. During my year of research with MWEDO in 2005–6, rep-
resentatives from the donor group visited the MWEDO offices constantly,
usually with little notice and official visitors in tow. MWEDO workers were
expected to suddenly drop their work to escort the donors and visitors to
visit some of the Maasai women’s groups. Ndinini and other MWEDO staff
made phone calls to members of the group, begged women like Nanyore to
ask the women to gather, purchased gifts for the women to give the visitors,
organized transport and food, and so forth. Inevitably, the same groups were
visited every time, because they were only an hour from Arusha and easily
accessible by a tarmac road. During the visit, the women would dance and
sing, give the visitors gifts, and pose patiently for many, many pictures.
Although Ndinini was grateful for the substantial support MWEDO re-
ceived from the donor, she confided that she sometimes wondered about the
“real” reasons for its support:

I am not sure if we are just cultural tourism for them. I looked at their
website the other day, and there is a big picture of one of their visits
to Longido. I am worried that they are just interested in MWEDO
because of the nice pictures of Maasai. But we want to get something
out of them. We gave them a proposal for maternal health, but they
152 Dorothy L. Hodgson

were not interested. They asked us to prepare a proposal on family

planning, but we weren’t interested. They wanted to encourage Maa-
sai women to take birth control pills! Can you imagine!?! But what
women need is food, health services, education and income—not
pills! [The donor] is very heavy-handed!

My interviews with some of the donor staff confirmed Ndinini’s suspicions.

When asked why they worked with MWEDO, one senior expatriate man
quipped, “they make good photo-ops!”
But it is not just white expatriates who romanticize and exoticize Maasai
women, treating them as photo-ops to be seen and admired, but not to be lis-
tened to. Many Tanzanians do the same.
In September 2005, Merry (a MWEDO staff person), Nanyore, and three
other MWEDO group members traveled to Dar es Salaam to participate in the
biannual Gender Festival organized by the Tanzanian Gender Networking Pro-
gramme (TGNP) and the Feminism Activist Coalition (FemAct), two promi-
nent Tanzanian feminist organizations, on the topic of “Gender, Democracy
and Development: Popular Struggles for an Alternative and Better World.” For
four days, more than 2,000 women and men from grassroots organizations, civil
society organizations, development groups, government, academia, and over-
seas participated in plenary sessions, workshops, and performances related to
the theme. In addition, there was a large exhibition featuring booths of craft
vendors, activist organizations, bookstores and more. The MWEDO members
ran a small booth on the fringes of the exhibition to sell beaded jewelry and
crafts produced by member groups. An older koko (grandmother) and younger
woman staffed the booth most of the time, in part because they barely spoke or
understood Swahili (much less English), the dominant languages of the Gender
Festival sessions. A third Maasai woman who had attended secondary school
in Kenya, and so was quite fluent in Swahili and English, also stayed with them.
Nanyore and Merry, however, browsed the other exhibitions, attended some ple-
nary and workshop sessions, and occasionally helped at the booth. Merry also
presented a brief description of MWEDO’s efforts to educate pastoralist girls at
a workshop on “popular struggles over education.” I spent the days sitting with
the women in the booth, accompanying Merry and Nanyore to sessions and
meals, and helping Merry prepare and type up her presentation.
From the first day, it was clear that the presence of the MWEDO women
and booth created quite a stir among other Tanzanians. Many men and
women tried on the jewelry, belts, and shirts to see how they looked, model-
 “These Are Not Our Priorities” 153

ing to the exclamations and admiration of their friends (far fewer bought
anything). (By the last day, several neighboring vendors were visibly upset,
complaining about why “the Maasai” received all the attention. “Why don’t
they take pictures of us?”) Nanyore in particular was the focus of much at-
tention, as she aggressively tried to sell the jewelry (“oh, you look terrific!”)
or proudly strode her slim, almost seven foot frame through the crowds. On
the days she dressed in Maasai clothes, she was thronged by men and women
who wanted their picture taken with her, to the point where I suggested, only
half-jokingly, that she start charging for the photos. “Are you really Maa-
sai?” asked one woman. “Yes, original!” she responded. “See how my ears are
pierced?” (pointing to the holes on both the lower lobe and upper ear). When
she stood up to ask a question (about why there were not more women mem-
bers of parliament, ministers, and government officials in attendance) at one
of the plenary sessions, she was mobbed by photographers and participants
taking pictures with their own cameras.
But the problem of culture was more than just a performance or display
of difference. On the third day, Nanyore wore an elegant dress and modest
gold jewelry, enjoying a respite from the constant attention of her admirers.
Together with Merry, we attended a workshop on “African Feminism: Theo-
ries and Discourses of Resistance.” At one point in the discussion, a Tanza-
nian woman reminded everyone to “remember the problem of culture. For
example, among Maasai, where I have done research, women have no rights,
they are forced to marry instead of go to school, and are forced to undergo
female genital mutilation. Men can sleep around, while women can’t.” Merry
and Nanyore just rolled their eyes at me, but neither responded. Afterward, I
asked them if they agreed with the woman. “No,” Nanyore replied, “it is not
that simple. And the problem is that it is always Maasai who are given as the
example of cultural oppression, but they never think about their own cultural
oppression.” Perhaps more important, “challenging polygyny [which was also
raised in the discussion as a sign of women’s oppression] and female cutting
are not our priorities.” Instead, she listed land rights, livestock, hunger, pov-
erty, and education as the more important issues to be addressed.

Debating Culture, Development, and Rights

So what does the story of MWEDO and its relationship to donors, Tanzanian
society, and mainstream Tanzanian women’s organizations tell us about the
154 Dorothy L. Hodgson

role of culture and power in current debates about gender and development?
Nanyore’s comment, “[these] are not our priorities,” gets to the crux of the
problem. While she, Ndinini, and other Maasai activists may be concerned
about female genital modification, polygyny, and other cultural practices,
they are far more alarmed by the increasing impoverishment, lack of rights,
and marginalization of Maasai women. What they find troubling is that dom-
inant society in Tanzania, including the main feminist organizations, do not
seem to listen to, recognize or support their priorities. Instead, these groups
continue to condemn and even criminalize Maasai for one specific cultural
practice—female genital modification—and use its presence or absence as a
measure of Maasai progress and “modernity.”16 Their attacks on Maasai cul-
tural practices echo repeated campaigns (like “Operation Dress Up” in the
late 1960s) by colonial and postcolonial governments (and several religious
denominations) to forcibly change other seemingly “primitive” aspects of
Maasai “culture” such as their attire, jewelry, and use of ochre on their skins
(Hodgson 2001a, 2005; Schneider 2006).
Maanda, a Maasai activist who heads the Pastoralist Women’s Council
(PWC),17 the other large Maasai women’s NGO in Tanzania, told me a story
about how the issue of FGM radically changed her relationship with another
well-known feminist NGO in Tanzania, Tanzania Media Women’s Associa-
tion (TAMWA).18 TAMWA had helped support Maanda when she fled her
village as a young woman to pursue further education rather than marry
against her will. She also worked for them for a few years in community out-
reach. But when, several years later, TAMWA asked Maanda and PWC to
collaborate in its national anti-FGM campaign, Maanda refused. “I told them
it was not my priority, it would block my work.” In response, “the woman
in TAMWA just told me, ‘you won’t work against it because you are just an
uneducated woman.’” Maanda even refused an offer of over 200 million shil-
lings (over $150,000) from a German donor “because I was not willing to
work and campaign against the practice.” Instead, “I believe that it should
be dealt with indirectly, by educating girls so that they can make their own
decisions.”
Moreover, like Ndinini and other educated Maasai women activists, she
argues that any effort should be toward seeking alternatives to the modifica-
tion, which is only one small part of a long series of ceremonies and celebra-
tions that ritually transform a Maasai girl into a Maasai woman (Hodgson
2001a, 2005; cf. Abusharaf 2001). She argues, “it is about cultural survival.
You can change the cutting, but you need to keep the ceremony, it is impor-
 “These Are Not Our Priorities” 155

tant.” And in fact, in several Maasai communities the cutting of the clitoris is
being replaced by a small, “ceremonial” cut on the inside of the thigh (see, for
example, Hodgson 2001a: 241–49). But in other communities fierce condem-
nation and government criminalization of the practice is making it more se-
cretive, and pushing some parents to “cut” their girls at younger and younger
ages, before they can be discovered—which creates new problems about the
status of these girl-women with regards to marriage, sex and pregnancy.19
Maanda, Ndinini, and other educated Maasai women’s activists’ stance on
female genital modification is both pragmatic and political. It is pragmatic in
the sense that they recognize that their constituents—rural, largely unedu-
cated Maasai women—have more pressing priorities, such as ensuring the
present and future survival and security of their families in increasingly diffi-
cult circumstances. Moreover, they believe that the only way the practice will
change is indirectly, through the education of girls (and boys). But their posi-
tion is also political; it is intended to confront and challenge the structural
power of TGNP, FemAct, TAMWA, and other Tanzanian and international
women’s groups who continue to “speak for” Maasai and other indigenous
women, rather than listen to, learn from, and work with them.
Conflicting ideas of “culture” and the role of “culture” in “development”
are central to these tensions. Most Tanzanians, especially Tanzanian femi-
nists, view “culture” as equivalent to “tradition,” a predominantly negative set
of static practices that they believe have oppressed women and obstructed
their progress toward equality and development. Yet their fascination with
Maasai clothes, jewelry, and women suggests an acceptance, even an em-
brace, of culture as display and performance. Unfortunately for organizations
like MWEDO and Maasai women like Nanyore, the result is that they figure
more as “photo-ops” than as protagonists struggling for political and eco-
nomic empowerment.
In contrast, Maasai activists and their constituents view culture as dy-
namic, contested, and often the site of female power and authority (see Hodg-
son 2005). As such, they often disaggregate “culture” by applying a gender
analysis to foreground “positive” practices (that is, those that are empowering
for women) such as spiritual healing and dispute “negative cultural practices”
(which they see as disempowering) like domestic violence. Moreover, they
make clear that the problems they face today are not inherent to their “cul-
tures” and “traditions,” but the product of broader political and economic
forces such as colonialism, missionary evangelization, capitalist industry, the
privatization of land and other natural resources, population pressures and
156 Dorothy L. Hodgson

HIV/AIDs that are depriving them of their lands and livelihoods and seri-
ously eroding their rights. Even domestic violence and the “culture of patriar-
chy” are understood as historically produced, linked to and articulated with
conflict, violence and patriarchal orders occurring nationally, regionally and
internationally.
But the tensions also reveal different ideas about “gender” and “gender
equality.” Several Maasai women, in conversations with me, explained that
while they wanted “equality” vis-à-vis Maasai men and all Tanzanians in
terms of rights to control and inherit property and resources and access to
health, education and other social services, they were not necessarily seeking
“equality” in terms of “women taking men’s roles and men taking women’s
roles.” Instead, as Mary Simat, a Kenyan Maasai activist with the Indigenous
Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC), stated at the UN Per-
manent Forum in 2004, “The key principle should be the complementarity of
gender.”20 Many Maasai women, in other words, are seeking equality in terms
of rights but not necessarily roles; most would be content to pursue their his-
torical responsibilities caring from young and sick animals, managing milk
processing and distribution, trading, cooking, caring for children, and so on
if the related rights and respect that used to accompany these roles were re-
stored. But they also recognize that years of political and economic changes
have undermined such possibilities, imposing new regimes of cash, com-
modities, private property, and wage labor that require new ways of being
and surviving.
Thus they confront the mainstream international women’s movement
with a more radical perspective on individual rights that recognizes how
political-economic structures like capitalism, neoliberalism, or what some
have called “the New World Order” produce structural obstacles to the free
exercise of such rights, so that the promotion of individual rights may at best
mask and at worst perpetuate and aggravate these systemic inequalities and
imperial relations. They also show how some of these seemingly universal,
acultural rights are in fact inherently “culture-bound,” with their naturalized
assumptions about individual agency, liberal ideas of gender equality, and the
inherent values and specific visions of modernity and progress (cf. Hodgson
2001b; Merry 2006: 228). Moreover, several examples in this chapter illustrate
how the national and international women’s movement itself, in its practices
and policies toward Maasai women, has been complicit at times with impe-
rialist “recolonization.” If these organizations really cared about the health
and well-being of Maasai women, why not support them in addressing the
 “These Are Not Our Priorities” 157

economic and political causes of disease, hunger, and insecurity? And if they
really cared about the human rights of Maasai women, why not support the
economic and political rights that Maasai women are seeking to obtain? Al-
though they face tremendous struggles in their daily lives, Maasai women
are hardly the ignorant “beasts of burden” shackled to tradition or the docile
embodiment or exhibitors of culture that some have assumed. Their current
struggles should encourage us to consider more nuanced, dynamic under-
standings of the relation of culture, power and rights in the context of history
and socio-economic change (Hodgson and McCurdy 2001).