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Does Female Leadership Stimulate Rwanda’s Business Growth?

Does Female Leadership Stimulate Rwanda’s Business Growth?

In 2013, Rwanda had the highest proportion of female members of parliament in the world with 64 percent of the seats taken by women in its lower house,  known as the Chamber of Deputies.

In Rwanda’s upper house of parliament — the Senate — 10 out of 26 seats must be filled by women, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, an international organization of parliaments. 

Rwanda’s devastating 1994 genocide resulted in a disproportionate loss of males. Rwandan society in the aftermath consisted mainly of women — nearly 70 percent of the population.

Scientific literature is growing on the role of women in politics, and many studies question if an increase in female leadership makes a difference.

How much does equitable female representation influence democratic governance? Does it have any effect on the economy, education (especially of girls), family planning, female empowerment, or traditional male-female relations?

Helen Hintjens is a senior lecturer at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands. She analyzed the high percentage of females in post-genocide Rwandan politics and women’s participation in the country’s politico-economic transition.

Here’s what she said on the subject: “I see this at one and the same time as a) a manipulative tool to convince Western donors that Rwanda’s government is genuinely progressive; b) as a genuine opportunity, something good that came out of the genocide, which was something bad; c) as a policy that reflects the reality that women do most of the work in most of the region, and d) as something that makes sense as a way to focus attention on something other than ethnicity.”

There is a substantial number of women in non-governmental organizations in Rwanda.

Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe is a Rwandan umbrella organization of female non-governmental organizations. Since its formation in 1992 it has been active in securing a legal framework of equal rights for women. Its activists contributed to Rwanda’s 2003 constitution, which regulates that women must hold at least 30 percent of the seats in the parliament. Promoting peace and development, non-violence and tolerance, Pro-Femmes has been running numerous programs to educate society at large. Activities include peace campaigns, communication training and capacity building, according to its website.

René Lemarchand is a political scientist, specialist in East-Africa and the Great Lakes region, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida.

Prophecy and Political Science

“Whether women’s role is likely to change in the sense of making significant inputs depends on what kind of political system Rwanda will become in years ahead,” Lemarchand told AFKInsider. “There is a distinction between prophecy and political science.”

Female politicians in Rwanda have been pushing forward a number of initiatives connected to relations between men and women, Hintjens said. The male-female relationship “already changed massively with the genocide, since most of it was engineered by men, even if women too were involved as perpetrators.”

A Rwandan radio soap program, “Urunana” took on the issue of women’s sexual health and became a national sensation. Hintjens researched the topic.“It is a good example of how issues that were once taboo in relation to male-female sexuality and marriage have become widely discussed and talked about,” Hintjens said. “This is the ‘vulgarity’ that some more old-fashioned, older-generation Rwandans complain about.”

Of all the issues that matter in Rwandan politics and female political participation today, business is the most important. “Business is veritably the new official religion,” according to Hintjens.

Rwanda is enjoying an impressive and stable economic growth. Although Rwanda is still a major U.S. ally in the region, “it is no longer a darling of the U.S. in Africa that it has been in the years following the genocide,” Lemarchand said. “U.S. policy makers are getting increasingly irritated over President Kagame’s double talk, particularly his repeated denial of involvement on behalf of the rebel military group March 23 Movement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

Rwanda’s history of genocide is comparable with few if any other countries in the continent. From a policy perspective, Rwanda can be an example for other African countries to open the arena for gender-sensitive policy making. With more women in politics the opportunity is there to articulate debate about gender roles.

Istvan Tarrosy is assistant professor of political science and director of the Africa Research Center at the University of Pecs, Hungary. In 2013 he was a Fulbright visiting research fellow at the Center for African Studies, University of Florida.