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Marjorie Mbiliniyi is a scholar, feminist and gender activist. She was born in 1943, in New York. Marjorie has dedicate herself to collaborate with and organize women to fight against patriarchy and neo-liberalism in Tanzania and beyond. She worked as a lecturer at the University of Dar Es Salaam where she retired in 2003. After her retirement from academia, she served as the Principal Policy Analyst at the Tanzania Gender Networking Program; later know as TGNP Mtandao from 2004 -2014.

Early Years
Marjorie Mbilinyi’s activism begun at an early stage in her life, her upbringing gave her an understanding of the power dynamics that exist in a gendered world. It was at this point that the feminist mantra the personal is political became alive for her. With the feminist movement galvanizing women in the 1960’s across America Marjorie came to have the tools that helped her identify and understand and name patriarchy as a system of oppression.

Education
Marjorie Mbilinyi attended Cornell University from 1961 -1965. It was during her undergraduate studies that she begun to fully engage in community organizing where she participated as an activist in the civil rights movement. Her first foray in civic activism was as part of the Voter Registration drive in Fayette County Tennessee in 1964. This experience gave her a significant look into what it meant to mobilize and organize a community of people as an ‘outsider’. She later went on to pursue her MA in Education Psychology at Stanford University. While at Stanford, she met her husband Simon Mbilinyi who was an international student from Tanzania.

Personal Life
In 1966, She migrated to Tanzania to join her husband in a country in midst of forming a national identity after years of oppressive colonial rule. In 1967 she became a Tanzanian citizen. Her marriage to Simon reflected the sage principles that guided her as an activist – in order to participate, engage and relate one had to be able to effectively communicate and form lasting relationships within their own community. Her focus on her family and their identity as a Tanzanian family were paramount. Forming strong ties within the family and community meant that the socialization and education of her children was one that reflected her family and the community that surrounded them. Having seen other families of mixed racial heritage at the time somehow lose that direct connection with their communities as they went off to boarding schools where they were taught ‘proper’ etiquette. Their children Nnali Tausi, Anina Mlelwa and Lyungai Fieli all attended Mlimani Primary school.

Balancing her professional responsibilities at the University of Dar es Salaam and her personal responsibilities as a mother was challenging. Her new ally on the home front was her children’s nanny Mwamvua or Mama Shija. Mama Shija gave her children and herself grounding in the Tanzanian culture as well as giving Marjorie the necessary support even when Mama Shija herself was balancing the same responsibilities as a wife/mother/employee.

In 1978 the Mbilinyi family suffered the loss of their son Mhemela, he was one year and three months old. The mantra the persona is political took on a new meaning for Marjorie at this time as a research opportunity came about with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Channeling her grief and anger after the passing of her own son she took on the research, advocating for more resources for the health and well being of children.

University of Dar es Salaam
The Hill, as the University was commonly known, was a place where Marjorie challenged the status quo of the patriarchal structures that governed the University. In the early 1960’s and 1970’s the University was a vibrant citadel for debate on the issues of socialism and self reliance. These debates were an open forum and were organized by various departments in and around the University; from the art, humanities and social sciences departments who organized these debates on a weekly basis. The participants were lecturers, students and people from the surrounding community. The purpose of this was to engage all the actors at the institution in discussing and debating curriculum reform and structural transformation of the University. While presenting a paper on women’s involvement in peasant production and reproduction in Tanzania, Marjorie Mbilinyi and her colleague Deborah Bryceson faced tough criticism and were told that they were ‘dividing the masses!’ The backlash when it came to gender/feminist analysis was from both the dogmatic Marxists leftists and the bourgeois nationalists on the right, who were of the belief that the gender question was a foreign idea.

Wanting to foster a different approach to that which was often faced at these seminars, Marjorie Mbilinyi fostered a culture with her post graduate students where they were encouraged to first look at the positive aspects of research, identify positive aspects and then for them to provide constructive criticism where the research presented fell short. Sexual discriminiation was on the minds of the academic staff, they witnessed it in the way services were offered to staff, in the recruitment of students, promotion and employment opportunities for academic staff. They formed an informal movement to fight this discrimination and it was in this collective activism that galvanized Marjorie Mbilinyi to become an active participant in the struggle for women’s rights.

The women in the academic staff took action by documenting the number of women and men in the academic staff, enrollment of students in the undergraduate and M.A. programs, the cases of sexual harassment of women staff and students and the lack of proper procedures to deal with these cases. These findings were presented at a meeting with the University of Dar es Salaam Academic Staff Assembly (UDASA) although the women faced criticism for threatening the unity of the academic staff they were successful in galvanizing the setting up of a Gender Sensitization unit [now Gender Studies] under the Chief Administrative office. This unit is currently tasked with developing and implementing gender sensitization sessions for students and top down management on an annual basis.

In the late 1970’s Ophelia Mascarenhas and Marjorie Mbilinyi presented a bibliography on Women and Development – this work was a compiled bilbliography of all the research reports and analytical essays written about women ad/or gender issues in Tanzania. The work focused especially on works written by Tanzanians. The first cyclostyled version of it was shared at the Bureau of Resource Assessment and Land Use Planning (BRALUP). This workshop that whose participants were authors of the works as well presented a validation to see gender studies as valid are for study and research. The work was later expanded as a substantive essay that focused o the resistance and struggles of Tanzanian women against patriarchy and capitalism during the pre colonial, colonial and post colonial era. This was a dynamic piece of literature that challenged the very notions of western feminism that viewed African women as being powerless victims, or the bourgeois nationalist view that the concept of gender equity was a foreign importation or the Marxist view that it was possible to separate gender and class struggles in the world of marginalized women

Women, academics and students at the university in the 1980s and 1990s fought to see the incorporation of more ‘gender’ courses, in the MA program an optional course on Gender Issues and Socio – Economic Development was established. This course was taught by Marjorie Mbilinyi until her retirement in 2003.

Institute of Development Studies – Women Study Group [IDSWSG}, Women Research and Documentation Project [WRDP]
Wanting to learn and study more on the issues of feminism a group of women at the University formed what begun as an informal study group under the Institute of Development Studies. The IDS – Women Study Group (IDS – WSG) would study and share feminist literature from Asia, Europe and African feminists. Marjorie Mbilinyi and the women actively researched ‘the women’s question’ in specific areas such as women peasants; women in the media; women and education. Proposals were written and after securing a grant of money and a car from the Ford Foundation, IDS, which had an all male management, saw the funds as belonging to the Institute and proposed reallocating the funds. The IDS-WSG group took a strong stance on this and put the funds on hold, deciding to reorganize themselves independently and to register the Women’s Research and Documentation Project, WRDP, in 1983. Success followed with the creation of the Women’s Research and Documentation Center that was located on the ground floor of the University’s library. The Center housed the top collections on gender/feminist issues in all of Tanzania at the time.

The WRDP was a formative and vocal advocate for women’s issues, leading Tanzanian women NGO’s to the Women’s World Forum in Nairobi in 1985.

Animation
Working in activism and research throughout her tenure both in and outside of the University of Dar es Salaam, she along with other researches developed participatory action research, what later termed animation.

‘Animation is predicated on the understanding that women and men who are exploited and oppressed are active knowers of the situation and many of its causes.’ Using this methodology allowed the barriers that were created by gender/ class/ethnicity to be broken down between the participant and researcher or middle class activist. In this way those who were the participants shared their knowledge and with the researchers/activists were able to come up with new knowledge and strategies for action. The approach brought together all actors from community members, government leaders, district leaders etc. Different forms of communication and media are use, appealing to the participants through song, dance, poetry, drama, and artwork, as well as interactive media.

First using this approach while teaching English at Jangwani Girls Secondary School as part of the Secondary Schools Research Project, a paper she collaborated with teachers and students publishing ‘The Colonizing Process in our Secondary Schools’ in 1975 through research and findings. The exploration of the challenges within their classrooms and of development of alternative teaching methodology allowed teachers and students to bring new knowledge and implement a strategy. The teachers saw that they needed to independently organize themselves. . After some push and added recommendations by Micheal Muze in his PhD dissertation the government conceded to the teachers forming their own teachers association.

Delving more and more into this approach of participatory research, Marjorie Mbilinyi credits animation with giving her local grounding and furthering her understanding and knowledge in the linkages between patriarchy and neo-liberalism.

Tanzania Gender Network Programme [TGNP – Mtandao]
In 1993 Tanzania Gender Networking Program was established as a membership organization. The structure of the organization was based on the structure of the WRDP, it was a group centered leadership. The organization used animation as its principle methodology and relied on collective decision-making. Keenly focused on the struggle against patriarchy and neo-liberal globalization giving credence to gender, class and imperial/race relationships and their transformation. This became transformative feminism.

Transformative feminism concerns girls/women’s struggles for liberation in both private and public spheres from patriarchy and neoliberalism, and their efforts to create entirely new forms of gender and class relations in which both women and men live and are able to fulfill themselves in all their potential. TGNP Mtandao worked on every level fully embracing animation as they approached issues of strategic engagement with government sectors/departments, engaging with local government authorities, and Parliament; and media engagement at all levels. The organization was also responsible for the Intensive Movement Building Cycle that combined participatory action research, support for local knowledge centers and linkages with investigative journalist.

Their work meant that communities were able to address gender/class issues with the government and non-government leaders also calling on the commercial private sector and having them have media coverage, a platform that ensured they wee heard and that their demands met. TGNP Mtandao has continued to advocate for gender equity, social justice and women’s empowerment not only in Tanzania but across the continent. Continuing the fight against patriarchy and capitalist globalization. Marjorie Mbilinyi begun with TGNP Mtandao in 1993 as the Excutive Director [at the time the title was Coordinator] until 1996 and upon her return after her retirement at the University of Dar es Salaam in 2003, she went on to take the role of ‘Principle Policy Analyst’ until 2014.

Works
Marjorie Mbilinyi has published 21 books and reports authored or co-authored and/or edited. Book titles none exhaustive
 * Nyerere on Education.. (co-editor with Elieshi Lema, Rakesh Rajani; 2004)
 * Activist Voices: Feminist Struggles for an Alternative World (co-editor with Mary Rusimbi, Chachage S L Chachage and Demere Kitunga, 2003)
 * Against Neoliberalism: Gender, Democracy & Development (co-editor Chachage S L Chachage, 2003)
 * Food is Politics (with KIHACHA, 2002)
 * Gender Patterns in Micro and Small Enterprises of Tanzania (Editor, 2000); Gender Profile of Tanzania (editor, TGNP, 1993)
 * Reviving Local Self-Reliance..(coeditor with Wilbert Gooneratne, 1992)
 * Big Slavery: Agribusiness and the Crisis in Women’s Employment in Tanzania (1991)
 * Women in Tanzania (co-authored with Ophelia Mascarenhas, 1983)

Awards
Awards for achievement in academia and civil society
 * Lifetime Achievement Award provided by Tanzanian Women Achievement Awards (TWAA) (2013)
 * Golden Award in recognition of outstanding achievement in establishment of Women Research and Documentation Programme (WRDP), University of Dar es Salaam (October 2012)
 * Visiting Professor Fellowship, International Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison (Sept-Dec 2002);
 * “Community Leaders Fellowship” of Gender and Global Change, Macarthur Programme, University of Minnesota/Twin Cities (Nov-Dec 2000)
 * Special Commendation by 1994 Noma Award for Books published in Africa, received by TGNP for Gender Profile of Tanzania (edited M. Mbilinyi, TGNP, 1993)