Women empowerment benefits whole society
By Emma Isumbingabo
Women are key stakeholders in the Rwandan socio-economic growth and having their efforts recognized and promoted through all political agendas is important in order to empower them to make even greater contributions to national agendas.
It is in this regard, the promotion of equality and equity for both men and women and empowerment of women in Rwanda is done through all national development processes. The government of Rwanda through the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion has set national policies, strategies and programs that aim at promoting gender equality, family, women empowerment and children’s rights, and all these are enclosed in the overall country development policies named Rwanda Vision 2020, the Seven Year Government Program and the Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy.
The Rwandan Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion has been created and given this mission of coordinating the formulation and the implementation of the national policies, strategies and programs aiming at promoting family, gender, women empowerment and children’s rights. Some of these main specific policies in regard to women empowerment are the 2005 National Policy for Family Promotion, the 2010 Rwanda National Gender policy and the National Policy Against Gender Based Violence.
The Ministry has been effective, to say the least, in addressing social and cultural practices that continue to limit women empowerment worldwide and is successfully implementing the required national women’s empowerment programs.
Today, Rwanda has achieved tremendous results that have been used by several countries and organizations as a positive case study whereby, the Rwandan Parliament has set precedence with the quota system that has 64% of parliamentary seats occupied by women. The Rwandan Cabinet has more than 40% women, 40-50% in the judiciary and more than 40% in all other decision-making positions. It is therefore no wonder that Rwanda has been ranking among the top in Africa, and the first 10 in the world in recent years for its efforts to promote women to take part in the country’s development agenda.
The above results in women empowerment are great examples of what a country can achieve with the right policies, strategies and programs in place. In Rwanda these key national planning tools stipulating clear development vision were the main factors that ensured the success that we are enjoying today. The other success factors used by the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion was working within what is referred to as the National gender machinery which consists of a collection of government institutions established to run and monitor gender equality geared programs so that the Ministry can be able to reach out to women at the grass-root level to educate them on their rights and encourage them to speak up in a culture where silence is valued. Another factor in the successful story is that in all the country’s institution planning exercises, gender and family promotion were considered as cross-cutting aspects and results were evaluated using our accountability mechanism called IMIHIGO: Performance Evaluation. Also Rwanda Home Grown solution/Initiatives contribute highly as well in the results we obtain, where they are used to address the challenges faced by the Rwandan family by referring to Rwandan Cultural family values.
The example of Rwanda shows therefore that women’s empowerment can be achieved through providing quality education, labor participation, media exposure, shifting negative traditional cultural norms and by promoting inclusiveness in economic development agenda.
When a woman is empowered, the whole society benefits.
Emma-Francoise Isumbingabo is the ambassador of Rwanda in Korea.