A mother who earns cannot be silenced. A mother who is not silenced keeps her daughter in school.

Most Maasai women marry young, often before they have finished growing up themselves. By the time they have children of their own, they are still learning who they are.

Land, cattle and money are rarely held in a woman's name. In pastoralist Maasai households, most decisions are made in rooms she is not part of.

Without income of her own, a mother has little say when her daughter's future is decided, whether she stays in school, or is married off instead. Research from northern Tanzania shows the age of marriage for Maasai girls has been falling, not rising, as families under economic pressure marry daughters younger.

This is not a story about tradition alone. It is a story about what happens when a woman has no independent means to shape the decisions that affect her own family.