Balancingthescales

Rwanda setting a good example in promoting women empowerment in Africa

A recent article published in The Guardian on January 12, titled On Parliamentary Equality the UK Is 48th. It Could Learn from No.1: Rwanda, calls on some of the world’s nations to learn a lesson or two from Rwanda as far as political inclusion of women is concerned. Indeed, Rwanda is leading the pack among African governments, non-governmental organizations, the private sector and the society that are increasingly uniting in working to improve the political and economic situation of women across the continent.

However, it is important to first note that the widespread assumption that African societies in the entirety of their cultures are inclined to look down on women is not really the case. Many African societies prior to colonial intrusion had a section of their female folk who were very empowered politically, economically and socially, and who participated actively in community organization and nation building. Colonialism introduced some form of Victorian gender ideology among the African upper class and to a large extent succeeded in erasing preexisting traditional forms of female power manifestations in precolonial Africa. From colonial records, women in precolonial Rwanda worked hard in the farms and had some measure of liberty over economic matters. However, colonialism, for the first time, consigned certain women to become housewives in the cities as a result of being married to male citizens who worked for the colonial administration. property.”

Rwanda is one country in Africa that has succeeded in structurally dismantling several barriers that previously consigned women to the status of underlings in the polity, and is gradually but steadily working to transform mindsets about women among the populace. Since the genocide of 1994, when approximately 1 million citizens were killed and some half a million women raped, the Government of Rwanda has put in efforts at improving the status of women, and has recorded some impressive results in that process. Indeed, Rwanda has been hailed as one of Africa’s success stories in terms of ensuring inclusion of women in governance, and in crafting policies to improve the social and economic situation of the nation’s female population.

Today, 64 percent of Rwanda’s parliamentarians are women, representing the highest proportion of female parliamentarians in the world. There is a dedicated agency to monitor issues of gender equity in the country known as the Gender Monitoring Office (GMO) and gender rights are enshrined in the country’s constitution. Several laws exist specifically to protect women’s right of inheritance to land, asset sharing in marriage relationships, and obtaining of credit for entrepreneurial endeavors.