Cultural Expectations Of Maasai Women

The cultural expectations and socially constructed gender roles in the Maasai Tribe directly affect women’s experiences and life choices in a negative way.

The Maasai Tribes cultural expectations and views on women, disempower and negatively impact female’s experiences and life choices in a variety of ways. Girls and women suffer incredibly in the Maasai tribe due to how they are viewed and the lack of value they are considered to have. Maasai girls are forced into genital mutilation as a sign of transforming from a girl into a woman , once seen as a woman at age 11 to 13, they are then chosen a husband by their father which they must obey and serve. Maasai women are also disempowered by the prohibition of having an education, prohibiting
It is a cultural expectation for a girl to have FGM to become a woman. This practice is viewed as the passage from a child into womanhood. Girls are forced and coerced into having FGM normally by a family member such as her father. Girls aged eleven to thirteen are forced to either have partial or total removal of their external genitals. Being forced to have body modifications disempowers girls by leaving them powerless to have a say about their own bodies. FGM is a traumatic and dangerous practice for girls with serious consequences. Girls suffer from various side effects such as bleeding, infections, infertility, local structural collapse and death as suffering from post-traumatic
Dowries in the Maasai Tribe consist of family cows and money. The expectations of a dowry often lead to girls being devalued by not only their culture but also their families. Countless families arrange a marriage early in a girls’ life, youngest being the age of ten, to quickly get rid of her and to exchange her for money and cows. Greed for a dowry often leads to families prohibiting a girl an education as there is no value for them to educate a daughter they will soon be getting rid of. Maasai culture only expects two things from a girl which are to be a servant to her husband and produce eight or more children, anything that doesn’t directly relate to either thing will not be provided or given to a girl. forbidding girls from an education and forcing their families to pay dowries disadvantage girls of the present and future as without an education a girl can never attempt to break the cycle of poverty and devaluing of not only her but her future children. The culturally expected dowry disempowers girl tremendously, as girls are viewed by not only their families, but their male suitors as objects to buy or sell, girls are bought from her family to then be owned by her