The making of elite women within revolution and nation building. The case of Eritrea ASC Research Seminar

Dr Tanja Müller has an MA in Linguistics and Philosophy from the Freie Universität Berlin (1991), a Masters in Development Studies from University College Dublin (1994), and a D.Phil. in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia, UK (2003). Over the last ten years she worked as a university lecturer in Dublin and in Asmara, an education consultant in Japan, a consultant on various development projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, and as a journalist on development issues. Since June 2003 she has been an assistant professor at Wageningen University, working for the AWLAE (African Women Leadership in Agriculture and the Environment) programme on the links between HIV/AIDS, food security, rural livelihoods and gender.

The Eritrean revolution has created a policy environment in which women are legally regarded as equal to men and are encouraged to occupy positions of leadership. It is, however, for women themselves to take up these new opportunities and to help change ‘traditional’ attitudes in the wider society. To enable women to do so, the avenues opening up via formal education are crucial. The narratives of different generations of elite women show how they find themselves in a position where they have to negotiate their future within the parameters of modern aspirations largely brought about by the revolution, cultural tradition and the demands of a post-revolutionary patriarchal state. While the Eritrean revolution played a decisive role in bringing about the emancipation of women, a failure to implement democratic structures of governance puts the revolution’s societal achievements at risk – and its legacy might well rest with the possibilities of personal liberation in individual lives.