The Rwanda Bar Association (RBA) says it has stepped up efforts to increase the number of women lawyers practicing in the country. Currently, out of 1,500 registered lawyers, only 325 are women.

On Friday, October 21, the association will be marking 25 years since its conception. It will be looking at, among other things, having more practicing women lawyers in Rwanda, mentoring young lawyers, and providing more legal education related to ethical standards.

According to the President of RBA, Moise Nkundabarashi, since the association’s establishment in 1997, there has been a massive improvement in regard to the number of women lawyers, though there is still a long way to go.

In 1997, RBA had a total of 37 lawyers, of those, only seven were women.

"We are encouraging more women to join the judiciary and practice as lawyers,” he noted.

The Bar Association has put in place a committee of women lawyers tasked to prepare courses tailored to help their counterparts in business development, especially in terms of establishing law firms.

"We are also getting financing for them. For instance, those who want to set up law firms, they can easily get financing from financial institutions like banks that have a partnership with the Bar Association,” Nkundabarashi said.

He also noted that the Bar Association has made an effort to have women in its top leadership, and so far, out of the 13 lawyers who sit on the association’s top council, seven are women.

The celebration of the 25th anniversary of the association is expected to attract more than 1,500 participants including members of the RBA, representatives of Rwanda’s Justice Sector, the East African Community, Africa, Europe, Asia, and America.

The one-day event will look at lawyers’ contributions to national transformation, but it will also assess the shortfalls, inefficiencies, and challenges that still affect the association and the legal profession that should be addressed in the near future.

What women lawyers say

In an interview with The New Times, Celine Karugu, one of the women members of Bar Association ‘s governing council admitted that the number of women lawyers practising in Rwanda is very low.

She noted that there are issues that discourage women from joining the profession, significant of which is the fact that lawyers do not have a fixed monthly salary.

"The job is really nice but you should be able to accept the fact that there is often no fixed salary at the end of the month,” she said.

Karugu also cited challenges related to pregnancy, where many women lose clients when they go on maternity leave, and struggle with a come-back afterward.

According to her, this makes women find difficulty in maintaining good levels of clientele.

Fatuma Mukakibibi, another woman lawyer also recognised similar challenges but said there are some solutions that can be applied to deal with them.