As the world celebrates the women’s month, the concept of equality and gender justice is at the forefront.

This year, the International Women’s Day March 8, was marked under the theme, ‘‘Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a Covid-19 world,’- with celebrations for women’s achievements however concerned parties are also using the platform to continue lobbying for more efforts in addressing existing gaps in order to gain gender parity.

With this in mind, AOS Ltd, a Rwandan based ICT service provider and operator of the National Data Centre, highlights the need for more women in leadership position reasoning that having them at every table where decisions are being made has a sound impact.

The National Gender Statistics Report 2019 highlights how in Rwanda women leadership participation is enshrined into the constitution and other laws and policies which has led to significantly improved women representation in the decision making spheres.

This is mainly captured by the ratios of women in parliament, ministerial positions, and other positions in various structures of governance both in public, private, and civil society entities.

At the central level, women’s representation in the cabinet reached 50% in 2018 up from 36.8% in 2014, women as permanent secretaries in ministries stood at 30% in 2018 down from 31.6 in 2014, while with regards to ambassadors, only 19% are females in 2018 down from 23.8% in 2014, the report shows.

At the decentralised level, women District Mayors in the term (2016-2021) stood at 26.7% in 2018 up from 6.7% in 2014, and only 17% of sector executive secretaries are females in 2018 up from 9.1% in 2014.

Annick Tuyishime, a cloud systems manager explains that generally, the gap between men and women in leadership positions, especially in Africa, are mostly due to gender culture issues, stereotypes, lack of organisational policies that encourages or favours women inclusion.

She clarifies that underrepresentation of women in leadership roles is an issue that is traced back in history across all sectors: public and private.

"Mostly women do not have a problem to join the workforce but it is not easy to climb the leadership ladder. This affects performance and leads to gender inequality, gender discrimination and gender pay gap,” she says.

Rita Kamanzi, the Chief Human Resource Officer at AOS notes that it is very important to have a gender-diverse management team because it is key for the organisation’s effectiveness and provides a variety of knowledge, skills and decision-making approaches.

She adds that women employees at AOS are provided with trainings, work recognition where awards are given to the best performers and many more.

Gloria Ingabire, the organisation’s Public Relations and Branding Officer, says at AOS, women leadership is taken as a priority and among the many steps they are taking to achieve this, is to recruit women employees to occupy different posts in our organisation.

"This will enhance us have a gender diverse team composed of a multiplicity of knowledge/skills.

In regards, to the celebration of this women’s day, Tuyishime says "There is still a long journey towards gender equality but on this International Women’s days, let us celebrate huge strides that have been made so far. Happy Women’s Day!”