The President who empowers Women

Rwanda’s achievements in gender equality and women empowerment have been made possible by President Paul Kagame. (Kagame/flickr)

On this land of Amata n’ubuki, the country of thousand hills, there was a monstrous leadership that prepared and executed the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. A 100 days of slaughter left Rwandan society in chaos. Children were killed, Women were raped, Infrastructures were destroyed, in fact nothing left except a man of a lion heart in the forest who were struggling to save the country which was at extinct.

In the immediate aftermath, the population was 70 percent female (women and girls). Given this demographic imbalance, women immediately assumed roles as heads of household, community leaders and financial providers, meeting the needs of devastated families and communities.

They were the ones who picked up the pieces of a literally decimated society and began to rebuild; they buried the dead, found homes for nearly 500,000 orphans, and built shelters.

Most of these women had never been educated or raised with the expectations of a career. In pre-genocide Rwanda, it was almost unheard of for women to own land or take a job outside the home.

The genocide against the Tutsi changed all that. It opened the workplace to Rwandan women just as World War II had opened it to American women. In America, most WWII opportunities were short-lived. Millions of men came home after the war to claim their former jobs while women returned to domestic roles or jobs like nurse, teacher or secretary. It wasn't until the 1960s that a new generation took up the call for equal opportunity.

After halting the Genocide, it was a time to re-set everything. In a country with no roads, no schools, no hospitals; there was a smell of ruin everywhere. Women were targeted during the genocide based not only upon their ethnicity, but also their gender. They were subjected to sexual assault and torture, including rape, forced incest, and breast oblation.

Women who survived the genocide lost husbands, children, relatives, and communities. They endured systematic rape and torture, witnessed unspeakable cruelty, and lost livelihoods and property. In addition to this violence, women faced displacement, family separation, and food insecurity, all of which resulted in post-conflict psychological trauma.

Their social structures were destroyed, their relationships and traditional networks were severed, and they were left to head their households and communities. Rwandans believe that in their victimization and endurance, women bore the brunt of the genocide and therefore deserve a significant and official role in the nation’s recovery.

In most countries, days following a war, men are favored in top offices and a voice of woman is sidelined. But in Kagame’s Rwanda, it is a different story.

The call for equality was led not by thousands of women but by one man — President Paul Kagame, who has led the country since he stopped the genocide. He decided that Rwanda was so demolished, so broken, it simply could not rebuild with men's labor alone.

The country's new constitution, passed in 2003, decreed that 30 percent of parliamentary seats and in all decision-making organs to be reserved for women. The government also pledged that girls' education would be encouraged. That women would be appointed to leadership roles, like government ministers and police chiefs. 

Those seats are elected by an innovative special electoral college composed of voters from local women’s councils and district councils. Besides the 24 reserved seats, women candidates won 26 other seats, of the 53 available, and the youth seat, for a total of 51 seats in Parliament (64 per cent). Women also make up 42 per cent of Cabinet members, 32 per cent of Senators, 50 per cent of judges, and 43.5 per cent of city and district council seats.

Rwandan women were fully enfranchised and granted the right to stand for election in 1961, at the time of independence from Belgium. The first female parliamentarian began serving in 1965. However, before its civil war in the early 1990s and the genocide in 1994, Rwandan women never held more than 18% of seats in the country’s parliament.

During the nine-year period of post-genocide transitional government, from 1994-2003, women’s representation reached 25.7% in the unicameral parliament (by appointment) and a new gender-sensitive constitution was adopted. It was the first post-genocide parliamentary elections of October 2003 that ushered women into the legislature in dramatic numbers.

This change from the top down was possible partly because of the nature of Rwanda's culture which used to guarantee women a seat at home not in class or in a political office. But the president Kagame had a broad popular mandate for sweeping change — he removed a woman from kitchen, trauma of the past to the decision-making scene.

In today’s Rwanda, women remain a demographic majority, comprising more than 50 percent of the population and contributing significantly to the productive capacity of the nation. 

A majority of the adult working population, they head 35 percent of households, are responsible for raising the next generation, and in this largely rural nation, produce the majority of the country’s agricultural output.

They are the majority constituency and the most productive segment of the Rwandan population. Rwandan women play a vital role, not only in physical reconstruction, but also in the crucial tasks of social healing, reconciliation, and increasingly, governance.

Women and men are equal in terms of ability and dignity, and they should also be equal in terms of opportunities. As Rwandans, as a global community, we need every member of our society to use his or her talents to the fullest if we are ever to reach our development goals. - His Excellency Paul KAGAME.

Women took up new roles as heads of households and engage in rebuilding the country along with others. Rwanda recognized that recovery and development would only succeed with women playing a central role.

Today, 52 per cent of Rwanda’s population of 10.5 million are women. Gender equality and women’s empowerment is a cornerstone of the Government of Rwanda’s development strategy and a proven source of development progress.

The greatest achievement since 1994 has been taking the women of Rwanda from being desperate victims to leading actors in the reconstruction of the country.