Rising woman: Power dynamics, gender pay gap woes

Dar es Salaam. Sara Ezra Teri is the Programmes Director at ‘MS Training Centre for Development Cooperation’ (MS-TCDC). This is a pan-African learning and knowledge Centre based in Usa River, Arusha, Region. It was formed under a bilateral agreement between the Governments of Tanzania and Denmark, whose parent company is ActionAid-Denmark. MS TCDC focus on capacity building in the areas of leadership, governance, democracy and development at large. In her Programmes Director’s role, she provides strategic and technical oversight on Learning, Knowledge, Academic, Intercultural, Communication and Philanthropy departments.

Sara says she has been privileged to have had a good background and upbringing, thanks to her parents. “From earlier in my life we were privileged, through my father’s job to live in Uganda and Kenya and that’s where I attained my primary and secondary education. For my tertiary education I undertook Political Science at the Bachelors level at the Wittenberg University, in Ohio USA and Development Studies at the Masters level at The University of Manchester, UK. I have always had an unwavering love for the continent and especially Tanzania, and I would attribute this to my parents, in that when looking for what master’s degree to undertake, I wanted to have something under my belt that would enable me to come back home and work with communities and the development sector at large. So, my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees were back-to-back and as soon as I was done with my matters, I was back home looking for a job”. She adds.

Sara says the roles she has secured to date have been because of looking through the good old newspaper and submitting an application. Never has she been head hunted or referred and she likes to share this with people because there is a tendency to attribute one’s success to undue privilege or favouritism or something else beyond that person’s hard-earned work.

Sara has a career spanning of 14 years in the NGO sector and private sector in Tanzania. She started off with an NGO - the-then Youth Action Volunteers (YAV); now ‘Sikika’) as a Programmes Officer, Policy Analysis and Advocacy.

They primarily focused on amplifying youth voices especially in holding leaders accountable for the commitments they made and also tracking whether money followed these commitments and whether those approved/allocated budgets by parliament were used appropriately. This was a very intense role one and at the time she did not feel ready for due to a combination of factors - its grandiosity and impact, the unwavering trust of her boss in her ability and even to take on more as his deputy and her insecurity about how she could be at the front of this fresh out of university. In retrospect it helped her grow but at the time she felt definitely in the deep end.

“It was gratifying to learn from this former boss about a year ago that the same tool I had developed to track government expenditure, with a few tweaks, is still being used by the organization!” Sara says.

Upon leaving YAV, she joined two more NGOs – EngenderHealth and Women’s Dignity. At EngenderHealth, she was a Program Officer for Policy and Advocacy and here they were looking at how to engage boys and men in the prevention on HIV/Aids, as well as how they can be supporters and partners of women’s health seeking. It was a lot of work around changing norms at societal and individual levels in various regions around the country. I served here for a little over two years.

Going to Women’s Dignity was like coming back home for her where she headed a program called Health Equity – which was a joint program by YAV, Care International, TGNP and Women’s Dignity itself – that was primarily focused on maternal health. “I served for close to three years in this role but this was the straw that broke the camel’s back because of the sense of unfairness I felt at several levels – from, at the time, seeing an under-resourced health-care area; witnessing how women had extra burdens on themselves from the distance to facility to items they needed to have first before at point of delivery; seeing an overwhelmed healthcare system; and being in a role of advocating but not being able to step in a do something practical”. It was at this juncture she decided to go to what some might view as the other extreme – the private sector. At the time she was looking for a private sector experience that would give her insight into how the private sector understood and approached development issues and what impact Isheor one could be able to see on ground.

She saw and applied for a role with African Barrick Gold as Community Development Coordinator. She started off at the regional office in Dar es Salaam supporting four mine sites – with the community development projects - and then moved on to one of the sites called Tulawaka to support with mine closure – specifically leading the social closure element - before heading to Bulyanhulu – where she grew through the years and at the end, she was the Community Relations Department lead – supporting Bulyanhulu’s community development efforts in Kahama and Msalala districts. In all, I was with ABG/Acacia Mining for a bit over five years. “I appreciated my experience with ABG/Acacia Mining for that fact that it was possible to undertake practical steps to support in community’s development priorities by placing the recourses directly towards the issue.”

At the time, the ‘makinikia’ saga was starting, I was already at least two years in on reflecting that I needed a pause to my career. “So, I took advantage of the crisis, the step down from role and take some time off. I did this for close to a year before coming back into the game and this time I am with MS TCDC to a bit over two years and a half.”

As a working woman Sara has experienced challenge at workplace, which included matters such as sexual harassment, lack of conducive policy environment, work-life imbalance, lack of role models, power dynamics, gender pay gap, with great confidence Sara says: “I have had every one of them; maybe not all at once but definitely all at some point in my 14-year career span, where I have been able to address them myself I have done so and where it was outside of me then I have brought people on board to support. And not to say that all was addressed or resolved but to encourage us women to be alive to these realities at the work place, to share experience and not accept the status quo”.

Asked on what she can point out as a successful achievement in her career she says: “I think success is subjective and I if I have to look back at every role I have ever held then there is something I consider a success – like the budget tracking tool developed that’s still being used till today; like setting up a programme and country office from scratch MenEngage/CHAMPION; like setting up and running the HealthEquity Group Network to focus solely on maternal health; like the many community projects (e.g. schools, health-care facilities, water facilities, etc.) completed as part of my community relations work, etc. I consider all these a success because I impacted at least a life and for me I am grateful for that”.

Ms Sara says women’s empowerment should happen in different spaces but the first and most critical space for it to start is at the household level. It starts with how a girl child is raised in her home and her community. How she is valued for her thoughts, actions and aspirations.

But for that to happen it then takes strong, informed, aware and committed home and community fronts, such that it doesn’t matter in whatever direction this girl child moves and/or develops into.

She continues to say, “However on the work front, I believe it takes a combination of elements. There need to have a conducive policy environment and or willingness from those in decision making roles to give an equal if not more privileged chance to a woman who is equally qualified as a man”.

Sara points out that at MS TCDC, in 2020 they subjected themselves to a Gender and Feminist Leadership Audit. The Audit came out with good insights on things we need to focus on as leadership and also staff. “We are committed to working on those issues in 2021 and also undertake this audit on an annual or bi-annual basis to access how far we have moved along from a people, systems and processes perspective. I share this because, in empowering women we also need to look at the operating environment holistically, there is no point on empowering an individual and the environment that they work in doesn’t support the new them. Our organization and companies need to be intentional about interrogating themselves whether truly they are doing the best they can”. She concludes