Hodgson, Dorothy. "These Are Not Our Priorities': Maasai Women, Human Rights, and the Problem of Culture". In Gender and Culture at the Limit of Rights, edited by Phillip J. McConnaughay and Dorothy L. Hodgson, 138-157, Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2011.

Hodgson, Dorothy. "These Are Not Our Priorities': Maasai Women, Human Rights, and the Problem of Culture". In Gender and Culture at the Limit of Rights, edited by Phillip J. McConnaughay and Dorothy L. Hodgson, 138-157, Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2011.

• Since the practice was illegalized in 1998, the Tanzania government has made the consistent efforts to eradicate female genital mutilation a major topic of press coverage, particularly focusing on the practice among the Maasai people (138).
• Many NGOs and community leaders among the Maasai, however, are loath to refocus their efforts on eradicating female circumcision, which they believe distracts from their primary goal of empowering the Maasai economically and politically (138).
• Maasai groups have been trapped between two contradictory human rights movements: one led by the international feminist movement, which classifies female circumcision as a human rights abuse and a form of violence against women, and the indigenous rights movement, which would protect female circumcision as a native cultural practice of the Maasai (139).
• From the 1980s onward, many traditionally marginalized African groups, like the Maasai in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, and the !Kung San in the Kalahari, joined the international indigenous peoples movement. This involvement has been an incredible resource boon, enabling these groups to mobilize for political and economic rights with international assistance (140).
• Unfortunately, entrance into these movement has almost always led by male elites of the ethnic groups, leading to a popular interpretation of 'indigeneity' and 'tradition' based around a conservative, patriarchal order (141).
• African women have becoming increasingly involved in the international feminist movement, including trends since the 1980s of including themes of women's empowerment in the framework of human rights. Unfortunately, these national movements have been led by elite African women, almost entirely excluding marginalized 'indigenous' peoples (141).
• Women of African 'indigenous peoples' have been triply marginalized from political discourses, which have excluded them from the elitist feminist movement, the patriarchal indigenous rights movement, and even the movement of indigenous women -- dominated by American First Nations (142-144).
• Maasai women were excluded from feminist dialogues internationally and in Tanzania, as both Western feminists and Tanzanian feminists viewed them as without agency, burdened under the excesses of a patriarchal culture which subjected them to un-feminist practices and disempowered them entirely, requiring the intervention of educated and empowered modern women (142).
• The men responsible for organizing the indigenous rights movement in Tanzania used the trappings of the 'tradition' they defended to disempower and marginalize Maasai women from the conversation, including through the segregation of women from political discussions, from which they had been traditionally excluded (142-143).
• The author focuses on Maasai Women's Development Organization [MWEDO] as a case study of the difficulty of balancing indigenous rights and women's rights in Africa. The organization was founded in 2000 in Arusha and provides services for women in 35 villages in outlying pastoral districts (144).
• One of the founders is Ndinini Kimesera Sikar, an educated Maasai woman who grew up in Dar es Salaam, became integrated into urban Swahili culture, studied finance and worked in banking for several years before marrying and moving to Arusha to found the MWEDO (144).
• The core message of MWEDO is that, contrary to the patriarchal justifications used by most indigenous peoples literature, men and women deserve equal treatment in Maasai society (145). The organization's main projects have been providing capital for women seeking to start their own businesses and gain independent sources of income, paying for Maasai girls to attend school, and educating women about their international rights (148-149).
• Current Tanzanian development plans are ambitious and focus on correcting large wealth disparities within the country, but are based on neoliberal economic plans to increase competitiveness, and plan to privatize public works and generally increase market pressures on the traditional pastoral customs of the Maasai (146).
• The implementation of these economic plans has resulted in increased poverty among the Maasai, and many men abandoning farming to work in poor labour positions in Dar es Salaam or Arusha. Women are increasingly head of households in Maasai communities, despite their disadvantaged political, economic, and legal position within Maasai society (146-147).
• The Maasai are systemically unserviced by public works in Tanzania, with only 8% of the school-age population in attendance, and that portion overwhelmingly male. Most Maasai women, and many men, are illiterate. Maasai communities receive substandard health care, leaving many Maasai to depend on traditional methods of care instead and work entirely outside of the system. This is particularly true in terms of reproductive health services (147-148).
• During interviews, many Maasai women and men mentioned the same key issues as priorities: access to clean water, functioning and affordable health care, poverty, and hunger. No Maasai mentioned female circumcision, polygamy, or arranged marriage as issues that MWEDO should deal with (150).
• Native feminist movements like MWEDO place 'cultural' issues like female circumcision in the background, if at all, in sharp contrast to the focus of the Tanzanian government and Western donors, who place 'cultural' issues in the foreground of women's oppression, willfully ignoring other forms of disempowerment more important to the oppressed women (151).
• Donor groups, both Western and Tanzanian, often impose their own values and priorities onto the Maasai, demonstrating an unwillingness to actually listen to Maasai-led groups like MWEDO in determining the forms of assistance to be provided (152).
• Other Tanzanian and Western feminists dismiss this unwillingness to actively work against the practice of female circumcision in particular as 'evidence' of the continued and essential uneducated nature of the Maasai, meaning that their opinions can then be dismissed (154).