Women activists seek to raise Tanzanian girls’ age of consent from 15 to 18

LAWRENCE — “My jaw dropped the first time someone told me that the age of consent was 14,” said Agnes Phoebe Muyanga, a doctoral candidate in women, gender & sexuality studies at the University of Kansas.

“I was so shocked. That revelation changed the focus of my research.”

Now after five years of doctoral studies, Muyanga has published a paper titled “The Socio-Political Performances of Care: Women Activists in Tanzania Push for the Increase of Tanzanian Girls’ Age of Consent from Fifteen Years to Eighteen Years.” The article speaks to performative care for victims of gender-based violence in Tanzania through established socio-cultural policies that reinforce the disproportionate challenges women activists face.

It appears in the Journal of Philosophical Investigations.

The age of consent is defined as the minimum legal age at which a person can agree to participate in sexual activity. For Muyanga’s research, it also intersects with the age at which women can legally marry. (In many countries, this marrying age is often years younger than for men.) In Tanzania, the baseline of 15 can be lowered to 14 with special permission from the court.

“In Uganda, where I grew up, you legally cannot have sex with someone below 18, whether you’re male or female,” Muyanga said. “And that is so young for any age below.”

Her paper examines the steps women’s organizations, activists and advocates are taking to increase that age of consent. She found that most proponents are fighting to raise the age to 18 — although some are even advocating it should be 21. 

“Culturally, men have been socio-politically positioned as superior in Tanzania and in many other countries. There is already a subservient way of living for women, especially young girls. The challenge with that is when women cannot even say ‘no,’ they do not have an ability to stop abuse or violence against them legally,” she said.

Religion is a huge influence on the age of consent in Tanzania. Approximately 63% of the population is Christian, and 34% is Muslim. Among the Muslim population, a Qadi (religious leader) had for generations been able to decide the age for females to be married. But legal challenges to this religious authority have recently worked its way through the courts, according to Muyanga.

“It’s constitutionally allowed that a girl can essentially be tortured,” she said. “Not directly. But it’s an indirect consequence of not having a policy that is going to protect this young girl at 14 from getting married to a 50-year-old. There’s no cap on the age for the men to marry. These girls are simply unable to have equity, whether physically, financially or socially.”

Muyanga herself is a survivor of sexual assault as both a child and teen.

“This is something I intentionally choose to study because I want to see things change,” she said. “And if there are systemic things being done that contribute to the abuse of young girls, I would like to help change that. On a personal level, I am perhaps too close to the subject as a survivor of sexual assault. However, on an academic level, my research is not directly about sexual or physical assault; it’s about feminist care ethics and practices.” 

Aside from moral reasons, what is the main argument for raising the age of consent?

“Education,” Muyanga said.

“Young girls need enough time to finish school without the pressure to either give birth or support your family financially through a bridal dowry, which is very common in different parts of the world. They should have the ability to continue through school without being pressured — whether by parents or by society or even by themselves — that they need to stop and get married to the highest bidder,” she said.

Muyanga began working on this project in 2022, traveling to Tanzania for a month at a time. In 2023, she spent almost a year there conducting one-on-one interviews and doing participant observation with individuals and organizations. She has been at KU since 2020, when she earned a Chancellor’s Doctoral Fellowship.

“In Tanzania, they’ve been having this conversation about the age of consent for a long time. Now I’m adding on to their voices,” Muyanga said.

“I’m still writing my dissertation, and this topic will have its own chapter. But right now, I’m contributing to the voices of the many Tanzanian scholars, activists, advocates and organizations that are doing care work for young girls and women.”