Does Equal Representation Equal Empowerment? A Case Study of Tanzanian Female-Identifying Students and Their Female President

Sammanfattning: In March 2021, the first-ever female president in Tanzania, Samia Suluhu Hassan, was inaugurated. This thesis explores how female-identifying students in Tanzania feel empowered by the representation provided by the female president and how identity influences this. This is assessed through a case study of female-identifying social science university students in Tanzania, answering to two research questions: 1. How does the presence of a female president impact female-identifying students in Tanzania’s sense of empowerment? 2. How does identity influence female empowerment through representation? Catering to the lack of previous qualitative research on the topic of female representation and empowerment, and the attempt at assessing students’ feelings and individual experiences, the thesis applies semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis as its methods of data collection and analysis. Feminist theory and Pitkin’s (1967) theory on political representation, and in particular descriptive representation, make up the theoretical framework. The results show that the female president did indeed influence the students’ sense of empowerment in some aspects, but not in all. While all students experienced empowerment in terms of improving their perceived opportunities, the evidence for increases in their actual opportunities and their power to choose and meet their prospects and goals was not as strong. Lastly, none of the students showed a change in her power to refuse what she had not chosen herself. As for identity, the thesis could not conclude on any correlation between demographic markers of identity, or the similarity and differences in the students’ and president’s identities. Supported by findings in previous literature, the thesis instead suggests that the inability to understand female empowerment by descriptive representation indicated that future studies need to examine another dimension of Pitkin’s (1967) framework on political representation - namely symbolic representation.