Educate Women - Do it Now! By Caitie G.

Caitie Gibbons 

Kigali City, Kigali 

Rwandan women are amazing, so much so that I cannot fathom everything they do in a day, let alone in a week. They are awake before sunrise sweeping both the inside and outside of the house. They’re out the door by six or seven headed to the fields with a baby on their back, and only tea in their stomach. They farm for eight hours a day, usually without eating. They arrive back to the home around sunset, wash, and begin preparing to cook dinner on charcoal in the dark; a three hour or longer process. They don’t relax until eight or nine earliest and depending on how many babies they have they don’t even relax then. They serve their husbands every want and need, even though they’ve worked all day. And they do all this respectfully and without complaint.

I could never do this. I did this for one day and afterward slept for a day and a half fatigued by all the strain I put my body through. 

As January arrived March 8, International Women’s Day, weighed heavily on my mind. International Women’s Day is a day of celebration and appreciation; it is also a day of action and change.  Women are the backbone to this country the unsung heroes, and this year this was going to be celebrated in some way.  

It came in the form of a training of over seventy participants, from governmental officials to local community leaders to volunteers serving abroad.  The training taught participants how to lead celebrations for women in their communities, initiating change, and promoting awareness in the gender gap.

Since the training in mid February, I have been fortunate enough to attend several celebrations and participate in conversations about gender in Rwanda. Many groups questioned if we needed more awareness on gender and if it was actually a problem in Rwanda. The most common thread among groups was that gender is a form of colonization. I’ve heard this argument before regarding a different subject eating raw vegetables, but I digress. Here’s the thing: development is a choice and about choosing that choice. Frankly, if you want to develop both sexes need to be equal, encouraged and given opportunities. When you limit an entire population based on their sex you are ultimately limiting your country from developing by limiting its resources and brain power. Only half of your population is being developed, only half of its people are using their brains for development.

The men, surprisingly, voiced their fears of educating women. After all they might take over, what would we do then? That may be true, and as much as I would personally like to see that future all over the world, I am careful to voice that. Gender and development is not about women taking over, but rather women having the right to choose without a firm male hand guiding her every decision.

The next question remained. So what now?

Education. Educate women and girls, educate all sexes equally. Educate about gender roles and norms. Educate woman and girls so that they can have a choice and access to other options.  

Ultimately my own goal for Woman’s Day was to use the Three E method. The Three E method was developed by a former PCV and an amazing woman. It goes like this: Empower, Encourage, Educate.

Empower (Women and girls to have confidence, make choices, and strive for what they want).

Encourage (To continue striving, we are in for the marathon not the sprint and there are many barriers for women).

Educate (Provide resources and all the knowledge you can to boys, girls, men and women).

Education does so many different things for development. It is the root of everything. It creates opportunities, increases critical thinking, decision making skills and provides access to different options. All of these things in a concrete sense sum up to producing jobs. Jobs are the source of economic growth which creates stability and leads us to development but it begins with education.  And not only providing an education but an equal opportunity education for both sexes. I work for a future in which every girl and woman has the choice and the skills to make that choice. Only then can development really truly occur.