Women empowerment

Rwanda has come a very long way from the pregenocide era when women could neither take on employment nor freely travel internationally without a signed approval obtained from their husbands. In pre-genocide Rwanda also, women could not inherit property and were sometimes forced to marry early and against their wishes, in addition to having no access to contraceptives. According to World Health Organization Inter-agency Group, the maternal mortality rate in births had fallen from 567 deaths per 100,000 births in 2005 to 290 deaths per 100,000 births in 2015. Approximately 98 percent of Rwandan women are covered by health insurance and there are less teenage marriages and pregnancies than ever before.

Rwanda’s progress in women empowerment cuts across sectors, and is very noticeable in the educa-