Browsing by Author "Sahlman, Paula"

This thesis is a part of Development through Sports discussion, particularly from gender perspective and its effort to improve women’s position and status in developing countries by using sport as a tool. The study aims to depict the position and effects produced by gender in the field of sport and education by the means of ethnography. The perspective of the study is holistic in its attempt to acknowledge the impact of Tanzanian society, economy and politics for girls’ and women’s position within sport and education. The study was carried out with 7-week long fieldwork in a Tanzanian teacher training college. The college was a boarding school and the study focused mainly on students of physical education. The data of the study was collected with participant observation, informal discussions, semistructured thematic interviews and structured survey questionnaire. Also study material used in the college was collected, such as course outlines and directions given to the students. The interviews were analysed with thematic analyse. The space of girls and women in the masculine field of sport in Tanzania is narrow and challenging. For sociocultural reasons, it is difficult for women to obtain the motorical and psychosocial skills needed in teaching physical education in childhood and youth. It is more difficult for girls and women to have access and to move in masculine spaces that in addition to sport and sporting fields, is salaried work done outside home. Salaried work is necessary for financing the studies, but acquiring the money has moral effects. The morally acceptable financiers of women’s education are families – fathers and husbands mainly. Moral conflicts are caused if a woman acquires the funding through transactional sex and/or uneducated, physical labour. By moving in these masculine, independent spaces of sport and money, the morality and value of a woman can be questioned and thus inhibit the development of women’s position in society and women’s financial independence.