Tanzania-Study Links Bride Price/Dowry to Abuse of Women
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: May 15, 2006
TANZANIA: Study links payment of bride price to abuse of women
DAR ES SALAAM, 16 May 2006 (IRIN) – The practice of paying
bride price is one of the factors contributing to women in Tanzania suffering
sexual abuse, battery and denial of their right to own property, a study
conducted by the Tanzania Media Women Association (TAMWA) says.
The
association’s report is based on a survey it conducted between January and March
in 10 of Tanzania mainland’s 21 regions. The survey showed that young men who
could not afford bride price ended up living with women and having children
without formal marriages.
A resident of Dar es Salaam, Lucy Koloa, told
IRIN on Tuesday: “Paying bride price is sometimes regarded as buying someone.
When my husband died 15 years ago, some of his relatives suggested that his
younger brother should take me as his second wife. I refused to accept such
nonsense.
“I was only 28 years old then. I left that family, with my two
children whom I have managed to raise as a single parent. No one from that
family is coming to visit me or my two children, not even the one who was
prepared to inherit me.”
According to the report, some families force
their daughters to drop out of school to get married, sometimes to rich old men
who are able to pay huge sums in bride price without even testing for HIV, the
virus that causes AIDS.
Dar es Salaam housewife Eva Makona said when a
man paid bride price, the woman would leaves her family and join the
man’s.
“As a matter of tradition, she has to obey the ‘lawful’ wishes and
standards of her new family,” she said. “Unfortunately, this is overdone by some
people who end up regarding a woman as mere property. They sometimes fail to
appreciate that a woman contributes to the wealth of the family and if one is
not careful one could lose her rights to property should she be
widowed.”
The study involved interviews of 725 people, 439 of them women,
from the country’s commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, as well as in the regions
of Iringa, Ruvuma, Mara, Tanga, Mwanza, Dodoma, Manyara, Morogoro and
Coast.
“We did not go deep into the villages, but we believe the findings
represent the general feelings [in the country],” Ananilea Nkya, the director of
the media association, said.
Some 500 respondents, representing 69
percent of all those interviewed, said dowry had a link to abuse of women in
marriage as some men regarded their wives as property because they had paid for
them.
The study also found that some parents took bride price as their
income, therefore charging exorbitant amount of cash or property. In some areas,
parents ask for up to 50 head of cattle, the study says. Items offered as bride
price include cash, livestock, land, clothes and equipment such motor vehicles
and bicycles.
The association conducted the study to assess the effects
of dowry with regard to violence against women, and to provoke national debate
in a bid to raise awareness on the negative impact of the practice. It also
aimed at proposing ways of rectifying the situation.
A primary school
teacher, Ludovick Sombanyi, said on Tuesday that the solution lay in taking
girls to school, which would in turn help them to become independent, whether or
not the bride price is paid for them.
“Many parents fail to educate their
daughters and this makes them economically weak and causes them to develop an
inferiority complex during their adulthood, a factor that makes them servants or
slaves of their partners in life,” he said.
However, while admitting that
bride price contributed, to some extent, to the abuse of women, Sombanyi said
the practise should not be abolished; instead, he said, communities must be
enlightened on women’s rights.
The association reported that some of the
women interviewed listed some of the abuses they continued to endure due to
bride price as insults, sexual abuse, battery, denial of their rights to own
property, being overworked and having to bear a large number of
children.
Women also complained of some men’s tendency to reclaim the
bride price when marriages broke up, saying fear of this outcome forced women to
cling to their marriages even when abused.
However, Tanzania’s Marriage
Act of 1971 does not mention bride price as a prerequisite for marriage,
although the practice is widely accepted among the country’s numerous ethnic
communities.
Meanwhile, 225 respondents, representing 31 percent of all
those interviewed, denied that bride price had any connection with the abuse of
women. They said abusing women was a matter of an individual’s character. This
group of respondents want the practice maintained as a way of binding couples as
well as cementing the relationship between families.
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