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Tracy A
Huye District, Southern Province
“When women advance,
everyone benefits. The key principle, in addition to understanding gender
equality as a human right, is to use talents of all our people to full
potential, in politics, business and elsewhere. This is common sense if we want
to advance and improve our societies.” – Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda
When
world leaders and other players in global development convened from September
25th-27th for the United National Sustainable Development
Summit 2015 in New York, they made sure to put gender equality on the agenda,
adopting the goal to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.” One
leader in attendance that has been consistently noted for his commitment in the
fight for equality was Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda. At the
time of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, when then
United States First Lady Hilary Rodham Clinton famously proclaimed that
“woman’s rights are human rights,” Rwanda was cited as one of the worst
violators of woman’s rights. Flash
forward twenty years later, and with a growing economy (at an annual growth
rate of about 8%), Rwanda has progressed from its image of “women’s rights
violators,” to being revered for its work in achieving gender equality. With the leadership of Paul Kagame and the
determination of Rwandans to develop their nation and respect women’s right as
a human right, Rwanda was acknowledged by the 2014 World Economic Forum as the best
performer in closing the gender gap in Africa, and was ranked 7th of
out 142 nations in the world, which is higher than most developed nations,
including the United States which comes in at 20.
It has
also been argued that few nations in the developing world have actively
endeavored to accomplish their goal of gender equality more than Rwanda. For example, 64% of Rwanda’s parliamentary
seats are held by women, making it the country with the highest women in parliament
(to compare, the global average is 20% of women in parliament). Also, Rwanda knows the importance of
educating girls and has reached gender parity with 98% of girls reported to be
enrolled in primary school, and girls making up 52% of students in secondary
school. In addition, Rwanda has made a
commitment to ending gender-based violence, and is overall trying to fully
integrate girls and women economically including exposing them to ICT and
expanding their technical skills by increasing their enrollment in TVET’s. When the HeForShe Campaign was unveiled, which
for those that don’t know is an initiative created by UN Women that encourages
boys and men to participate in the fight for gender equality, it was noted that
Kagame was one of the first leaders to show his support, and he pledged at
least 100,000 pledges of support from Rwandan boys and men, and encouraged other
African nations to do the same.
Although
Rwanda has made tremendous progress on its own accord and serves as a bright
spot in an otherwise bleak narrative of global gender inequality and women’s
rights abuses, there is still a ways to go.
This is especially true in some rural communities where traditional
gender roles, biases, and norms can still rule households, and can impede on
the prosperity of girls and consequently their families, their communities, and
their country. Although this culture
exists in some communities, as a Peace Corps volunteer in a rural community I
am constantly impressed with the overall awareness of the importance of gender
equality especially amongst the young people I encounter and work with. Rwandan youth will be an essential part in
their nation’s attainment of gender equality, and it is generally simple to
expose them to the importance at young age, including opening up a dialogue on
gender equality in which both boys and girls participate, and instilling
confidence in girls by encouraging them to speak up or even raise their hands
in class to answer a question.
Peace
Corps Rwanda volunteers with the support of GAD, but only with Rwandan citizens
in the forefront, can implement projects and activities in their communities
that can help project full realization that when girls and women are afforded
the same opportunities as boys and men in all sectors of society, everyone
truly benefits. Rwanda has the potential
to be, and should be an example to the world on how striving towards gender
equality can develop and sustain a nation.
It is in everybody’s best interest to ensure that Rwanda, and also other
countries, economically-developed or not, does not diverge from its desire for
girls to reach their upmost socio-economic potential. And as the HeForShe initiative posits, male
allies are very much needed in the fight for gender equality and women’s
rights. So I leave you with a few male
youth allies to voice why they think gender equality is important, in their own
words. These boys attend the secondary school in my community and were a part of the
South Regional BE (Boys Excelling) camp in August. They were also the first ones
to accept my call in my community to sign the online petition for the HeForShe
Campaign, and show solidarity for gender equality and help Rwanda reach its
100,000 pledge goal.
"Some countries,
including Rwanda, are striving towards equality between men and women. Gender equality is the development of a
country. It improves the economics of a
country, and fights discrimination against women. When men and women share the same status, it
helps lead to a peaceful society. All people must make an effort to respect
gender equality."- Emmanuel
"Gender equality is
important in a society because it allows everyone to express his or her own
opinion. For example, when men and women
join their ideas in politics about how their country should be developed, it is
necessary to listen to everyone’s ideas to determine which ones are best. Gender equality is also needed in the home,
when men and women share the same respect in their different work, it helps
improve families. When both sexes share
the same rights in a society, it leads to the development of that society."-Eric
"Gender equality is
very important because if women and man have an equal chance for any work, it
will improve countries, and lead to unity and reconciliation. It will also improve the confidence of girls
and women to do as well as men in roles that are considered to be male
activities."- Herve Noel
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