Shelly with translator and research assistant Scolastika in Looldupa Boma, Longido Tanzania

The research team sharing dinner on our first night outside of Minjingo, Tanzania

Umoja (“unity in Swahili) is an all-female village located in northern Kenya. Founded as a “violence-free” village for survivors of gender-based violence and young girls running from forced marriages.

Shelly trying, and failing, to produce milk during the morning milking.

More women’s work: morning milking.

Women’s work: housebuilding.

A failed attempt to push out our stuck transportation in a field visit.

An interview in a woman’s house in Ngarineibor.

Throughout East Africa, and in Tanzania in particular, domestic violence is widespread.  Rates are especially alarming in rural areas, where culturally sanctioned violence, combined with low levels of formal education, leave women in subordinate positions with little knowledge of their rights. In a similar project to that described in Nicaragua, I aimed to replicate and extend the examination of women’s land ownership and receipt of violence.  In collaboration with the Maasai Women’s Development Organization and Dr. Mara Goldman from the University of Colorado-Boulder, I developed a quasi-experimental study to cross-sectionally and longitudinally examine processes by which land ownership and civic participation promote women’s empowerment and, in turn, lead to a reduction in violence.  This research is supported through the National Science Foundation’s Sociology and Geography Programs (grant 0921537).

• Grabe, S. (accepted). Participation: Structural and relational power and Maasai women’s political subjectivity in Tanzania. Feminism & Psychology.
• Grabe, S., & Grose, R., & Dutt, A. (2015). Women’s land ownership and relationship power: A mixed methods approach to understanding structural inequities and violence against women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 39, 7-19.
• Grabe, S., Dutt, A., & Dworkin, S. (2014). Women’s community mobilization and well-being: Local resistance gendered social inequities in Nicaragua and Tanzania. Journal of Community Psychology.