Unlike men, Rwandan women before the Liberation did not enjoy inheritance rights and most did not achieve a post high school education.
Traditionally, both in the households and on the national level, men were dominant and women’s participation in decision-making was quite insignificant.
The genocide reversed these dynamics. Most men were either killed during the genocide or in jail because of it. One must also keep in mind that those who committed atrocities were longtime neighbors of their victims, sometimes their relatives.
In the absence of men, women were at the front line of the social and economic reconstruction process. All of a sudden, they became the chiefs of their families. They had to provide for their children, their relatives’ children (it is a common practice to adopt them) and their elderly relatives.
After the Liberation, the government recognized women as key players in the nation building process, commitment to gender equality at the highest level of leadership and women’s resiliency in hardship and willingness to step up to the challenges were the key elements that played a role in making women equal participants.
The country’s achievements can be attributed to the unique path the nation took in addressing gender issues during the post-conflict reconstruction.
These developments led to policy and legal reforms in areas critical to advancing women’s economic status and well being including the Law on Matrimonial Regimes, Donations, Succession and Liberalities 1999 that stipulates gender equality in property ownership in marriages and inheritance.
Among other reforms the 2003 Constitution that includes provisions for equal rights between men and women the, Gender Policy 2004, the Organic Land Law 2005 which ensures equality to land ownership; and the Law for the Prevention, Protection and Punishment of Gender Based Violence of 2008.
In 2003, Rwanda elected 48.8 percent women to its lower house of parliament, giving it the world’s highest percentage of women in a national legislature.
Women achieved this dramatic increase, up from 17.1 percent just a decade earlier, in the aftermath of violent conflict. Five years later, in the first real test of women’s gains, the September 2008 parliamentary election powerfully reaffirmed Rwanda’s top global ranking for female legislative representation.
In that election, women earned 56 percent of seats in the lower house.
The combined numbers of women in the lower house and the Senate made Rwanda the first country to have a majority-female legislature.
Though women made remarkable gains in 2003, their 2008 success was even more dramatic because it demonstrated that women in Rwanda can sustain their gains from one election cycle to the next.
The success of women parliamentarians in Rwanda has prompted questions about how women achieved such unprecedented levels of political representation.
Women’s leading role in reconstruction and recovery in the wake of a genocide that left almost a million people dead and irreparably altered countless lives is often cited as a primary reason for the deliberate inclusion of women in the post-genocide political regime.
The Forum of Women Parliamentarians (FFRP) has also explicitly viewed its legislative work on gender issues as a necessary response that women policymakers in particular can use to address persistent violations of women’s rights often supported by a “culture of silence.”
As the foundation of the post- genocide legal system, the constitution mandates a mini- mum of 30 percent representation of women at all decision-making levels e.g., local government, parliament and cabinet.
Rwanda has also ratified key international protocols on women’s rights, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms in the past.
About 27% of those elected to the district councils in 2001 were women and more than 30 percent of those elected to district councils in 2006 and currently serving are women.
The system of women’s councils is an additional electoral structure that has been key to guaranteeing women’s representation in Rwanda.
Women’s councils are grassroots bodies elected at the cell level by only women.
The Ministry of Gender and Women in Development MIGEPRO- FE established the women’s councils shortly after the genocide, and their role has expanded considerably.
Rwanda women have also continued to enjoy the empowerment from the various policies designed by the Rwandan government after liberation, which are aimed at encouraging women entrepreneurship. Some of the policies include:
Policy of savings and access to finance and bank loan services, policy on women empowerment through the Rwandan Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Policy -which is designed to complement a set of existing policies and strategies that aim to increase non-farm employment, develop business and technical skills in the Rwandan workforce, support targeted value-added clusters, strengthen the financial sector, grow the tax base and facilitate investment finance to generate industrial growth.
Women head 42 per cent of enterprises. They comprise 58 per cent of enterprises in the formal sector, which accounts for 30 percent of GDP. The majority are engaged in the retail sector 82 percent.
With the rest focusing on services 16 to17 percent and manufacturing 1to2 percent sectors many women’s businesses are huge and large.
Liberation day that falls on July 4 marks the day when the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) stopped the Genocide against Tutsi in 1994 and established a unity and reconciliation government that included other political parties.
This year will marked the 19th Liberation Day themed “Celebrating Africa’s Renaissance, Working towards Self-reliance.”