“We reaffirm our Mozambican identity in the fight against HIV and AIDS”: Examining educational perspectives on women’s ‘proper’ place in the nation of Mozambique

Abstract

There is increasing recognition of the importance of space in the study of education, resulting in a greatly diversified literature on the geographies of education. This article builds on this growing body of scholarly work to examine a number of critical spatial assumptions underpinning school-based HIV-and AIDS-related education in Maputo, Mozambique. It does so through an analysis of key governmental and ministerial documents and policy-makers' and educators' conceptions of the aims of such education. This article highlights how school-based HIV-and AIDS-related education in Mozambique was conceptualized in gendered and distinctly place-based terms. In addition, we elucidate how, despite the various discursive shifts since the struggle for independence from Portugal, young women continue to be construed as the symbolic anchor of the nation, their natural place defined in relation to the domestic, the intimate, and local 'in-here.'

“Let’s Move, Let’s Not Remain Stagnant”: Nationalism, Masculinism, and School-Based Education in Mozambique

“…Despite this important political and economic transition, the analysis highlighted that, in various ways, the national imagination across these two broad periods has remained strikingly constant (see also Miedema and Millei 2015). First, across these periods, these imaginations drew on, and further entrenched, a fairly consistent presentation of a shared national past, and vision of the present and future, and that in important ways these "maps" were grounded in a sense of humiliation, memory, and hope (Enloe 2000).…”

“…As noted elsewhere (Miedema and Millei 2015), the family was both women's primary domain and constituted "the first cell of the party" (Machel 1973, as cited in Newitt 1995. Additionally, while Frelimo was against traditional marriage ceremonies and the practice of lobolo (bridewealth), young people who sought to marry without their parents' consent or ceremony were severely condemned (Arnfred 2004).…”

“…Decolonization thus departed from, and reaffirmed, the modernist ideological creation of the nation-state. In addition, Gupta (1997) argues, decolonization involved a process of mapping a national past, present, and future vision on to a territorial entity that was often only consolidated during or directly after colonial rule (see also Anderson 2006 The process of mapping of meaning onto the territory of the new Mozambican nation consisted of creating a shared identity based on a collective memory of external and internal oppression (Meneses 2012;Miedema and Millei 2015). The former was partly defined in relation to colonial institutions, which Frelimo set about dismantling following independence.…”

“…As the analysis shows, "locating" the new Mozambican, furthermore, entailed an emphasis on unity, and processes of forgetting, silencing, and "Othering." Finally, the discussion revealed that despite the centrality of the "new," from a gender and generational perspective, Frelimo's nationbuilding efforts need to be understood as geared to a masculinist interpretation of "emancipation" as involvement in industrialized production, and a "re-traditionalization" of society, understood in the patriarchal sense of entrenching women and children's place under the guardianship of a male elder (Nagel 1998;Kesby et al 2006;Miedema and Millei 2015). Christian morals (Arnfred 2004).…”

“…Adelaide, Gandhi school, October 26, 2010). Therefore, the combination of the emphasis on the notion of entrepreneurship and women's perceived role as educators of the young suggests that education was geared to further entrenching women's double workload located in the economic and domestic domain (on this point see also Çagatay 2003;Robinson 2006;Miedema and Millei 2015). In addition, from a gender perspective, while the emphasis on entrepreneurship in the secondary school curriculum may be interpreted as encouraging in that young women were stimulated to enter domains that traditionally were seen to be the preserve of men, the "emancipatory" potential of the notion is undermined by the considerable gender-based discrimination female entre-preneurs are faced with in practice.…”