Women\u27s Access to Secondary Education in Colonial and Postcolonial Tanzania and Rwanda

This paper will examine how the politics of colonialism and independence during the twentieth century, as well as the culture of each country, have created and limited secondary educational opportunities for women in Tanzania and in Rwanda. I will argue that the English and Belgian colonizers\u27 goals of the education systems in colonial Tanganyika and Ruanda-Urundi-how much education they thought was appropriate for women to have and their overarching goals in creating the education systems in the colonies-shaped the place of women within Tanzania and Rwanda today. I will argue that English and Belgian colonizers imposed a western, Christian, patriarchal social organization upon native African societies and used schooling as a tool to shape the place of women within these societies, leading to the second-class citizenship of and lack of access to educational opportunities faced by women in contemporary Tanzania and Rwanda