The year 2017 found Eugenie Mukandoli optimistic about her marriage once again like she had been in 1981 when she got married to Frederick Sibomana. For the larger part of their union, Sibomana had been an abusive partner.

But since 2016 when the couple began their ‘journey of change,’ Sibomana has become a more cooperative partner.

Thanks to a series of gender-sensitive sessions by the organisation Rwanda Men’s Resource Centre (RWAMREC), Sibomana, 64, and Mukandoli, 65, got to learn about gender-based violence and its causes.

At their rural home in Save Sector, Gisagara District, a soft-spoken Mukandoli said recently that she had for years remained silent about Sibmana’s behaviour.

"I didn’t even know that what he did was abuse,” she said, "I thought that that was a man’s behaviour.”

Mukandoli’s is not an isolated case. According to the National Institute of Statistics, 65 per cent of women think wife-beating can be justified under certain circumstances, a fact that suggests that they do need gender-sensitive teachings.

To avoid arguments that could result in beatings, she often fled to her mother-in-law and returned the next day.

Sibomana owned everything and made all the decisions. "I behaved like the ruler in my house,” he said.

But after the gender teachings, "I have changed,” Sibomana asserted. "And I’m no longer the alcoholic man.”

Alcoholism amongst men is responsible for 85 per cent of all GBV cases against women, according to the 2020 Demographic Health Survey (DHS).

"My house now has piped water, electricity and a cement floor – things I had long failed to do. And he bought me a phone,” Mukandoli said with a smile.

Sibomana takes pride in being a ‘community activist’ who helps other men to change. With Mukandoli, he said they have helped more than 30 couples to recover from conflicts.

"They see that something has changed in our family and they’re eager to emulate us,” he says.

In Gisagara alone, RWAMREC has helped more than 400 couples to recover from intimate partner violence, and there are an estimated 800 more who still need the gender-sensitive sessions, which last up to six months.

Making decisions together

With more than 90 per cent of legally married couples in Rwanda living under the community property regime, according to figures from the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion, misuse of family resources is one of the contributing factors to gender-based violence in families.

Esperance Mukamana had an uneasy relationship due the misuse of the family property at the hands of her husband Deo Sindikubwabo.

The couple owns cows and plots of land. Despite tending the land and cows together, Sindikubwabo sold the harvest and spent the money on alcohol with his friends.

"Sometimes, he even sold a goat without my knowledge,” she said.

Like her neighbour Mukandoli, Mukamana too never thought of her husband’s behaviour as inappropriate, though she neither liked it.

Now, after the teachings, the farming couple cherishes their reformed relationship. "We make decisions together,” she said.

With a stable relationship, they said, they have since become wealthier.

"Could I have been able to connect my house to electricity?” Sindikubwabo asked rhetorically after switching the bulb in his living room. "We bought a plot of land for Rwf100, 000, and now we can’t sell it for less than a million.”

RWAMREC says the gender teachings involving men are the right way to address GBV and its causes.

The sessions attended by couples are also about gender roles at home and unpaid care work, and address perceptions that men cannot do home chores like cooking and looking after children.

While significant progress has been made in Rwanda to realise a safer society, RWAMREC says there is a need to keep building the capacity of the people in the public sector and non-profit organisations who lead the gender transformation.

"Sometimes you see that people in the gender sector are not necessarily feminist or gender-transformative,” Ilaria Buscaglia, the head of programmes at RWAMREC, said.

"They might just do the work, but without really looking farther for a sustainable change. There should be a conscious leadership at every level to take up this mission of transforming gender norms.”