Wednesday, 26 January 2011
‘Some women want to be on top’: Wife-beating in two Tanzanian districts
Hilde Jakobsen
University of Bergen, Norway
Visiting scholar at the Center for Research on Gender and Women
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Time and Location: 12:00pm, 206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI
Co-sponsored by the Center for Research on Gender and Women.
Domestic violence has recently come to be seen as a ‘social problem’ in Tanzania. At the same time, surveys find that an overwhelming majority of the public feels a husband has the right to beat his wife. This paper explores some of the social norms by which wife-beating is supported, condoned or contested in peri-urban Tanzania, drawing on focus group discussions among residents of Arumeru and Kigoma districts.