Rwanda has been credited as the most gender equal country in Africa and sixth in the world, but several harmful gender norms persist, putting women in a bad place and almost impossible to achieve gender equality.

One of the norms is that women bear most of the unpaid care work in a household, something casually referred to as ‘fulfilling household duties’ in Kinyarwanda (kuzuza inshingano z’urugo).

Unpaid care work is the provision of services within households for other household and community members. It includes caring for children and the sick, cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry, among others.

In rural areas, it may also include fetching water, collecting firewood, and more.

While this time and energy-consuming work is done by both women and men, research shows that it is distributed disproportionately, with women doing more than men.

Globally, 75 percent of housework is done by women and girls, which shows the tremendous unequal distribution of labour in a household, yet without it, society cannot function.

UN Women’s 2022 baseline survey in eight districts of Rwanda found that rural women spend on average 7.1 hours per day occupied with unpaid household work, while their male counterparts spend only 2.1 hours.

The difference is not much for urban dwellers who have more access to electricity, water and cooking gas, because women spend 6.9 hours per day on unpaid care work, while their male counterparts spend 2.1 hours.

The burden of work carried by women not only limits them to engage in income generating work, it also contributes to their violence.

The Rwanda Demographic Health Survey 2020 found that 65 percent of women think wife-beating is excusable if she has not fulfilled her ‘duties’ such as cooking, among other circumstances.

Nevertheless, every hour a woman spends on unpaid care work is one hour less she could potentially spend on market-related activities or acquiring educational and vocational skills, not forgetting that sometimes, it comes at a cost. For instance, some women can’t take on decent paying jobs or full-time jobs, which reduces their chance at having pension and other employment benefits such as health insurance.

Take Therese Kansayisa, 65, a resident of Ngoma District, who says that a year ago, she was an exhausted woman because of all the work she had to do at home, most of which was not even paid.

Besides her day-to-day job as a farmer, she is raising five orphans, two of whom are aged five and three.

Kansayisa used to go to bed at 11:00 PM and get up at 4:00 AM to be able to go to the farm.

Among other things, she had to first collect firewood, milk the family cow, prepare and cook what the children would eat in the morning and what the youngest, then two years old, would eat at the farm.

She also had to get her husband ready for his work too, and that includes getting his clothes and food ready.

By 7:00 AM, Kansayisa would already be on the way with a baby on her back. She would lay the baby a few metres away from where she is digging, and in just a couple of minutes, she would cry for food.

At mid-day, Kansayisa had to go back home to cook for the older children returning from school and her husband too.

Her afternoons were mostly for washing clothes and utensils, and other work that would eventually keep her up until late at night.

This was not only taking a toll on Kansayisa’s physical health, but she was also getting frustrated. A woman of her age should be able to take enough rest and limit her physical work, something she couldn’t afford.

Last year, she and members of the horticulture cooperative she leads, learnt of Early Childhood Development Centres (ECDs) and requested their district officials to find them partners to have one too, an effort that was successful shortly after.

"Except the youngest child that I carried around, I would send the one who was aged four to my neighbours. He was always in the street jumping from one house to another,” she narrated.

Besides this, Kansayisa got an energy saving stove locally known as ‘Runonko’, which allows her to save time she would have used collecting firewood or lighting up a fire.

"Now, I don’t need to wake up very early or go to bed very late. My children are also living better because I can now make healthy meals in a short time. The younger children spend their days at the ECD where they are well-fed and taken care of, as I go to the farm freely and concentrate on my daily activities,” She added.

Kansayisa shared her testimony in UN Women’s National Workshop on advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment through addressing unpaid care work in Rwanda, on March 22 to 24.

Recognise, Reduce, Redistribute

Although the concept of equal unpaid care work distribution is often perceived as a westernized concept, evidence and data show that women in Rwanda are equally affected by the heavy burden of unpaid care and domestic work.

UN Women’s ‘3R Strategy’ to recognize, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work calls for actions to go beyond increasing the visibility of unpaid care work as a policy issue to also include policies to alleviate the care work and divide it between women and men, families, and public and market services in a more balanced and equitable manner, providing better and more visible employment to care workers, such as decent work.

UN Women representative in Rwanda, Jennet Kem, told The New Times that the ‘3R’ programme can provide both action and policy’s case.

"If we can look at a policy that will address recognition, reduction and redistribution, and we bring it into community understanding and practice, it would be one of the ways of addressing the issue of unpaid care work,” Kem noted.

She added that Rwanda is already doing much, and it is one of the countries taking ECD seriously, among others.

"It is also already on a good foot in regards to policy because unpaid care work is identified in the national gender policy and part of redistribution is getting men engaged. The government has a whole strategy on men's engagement. Even on investment, the government is bringing water closer to people, health care, and so much more,” she said.

Silas Ngayaboshya, the Director-General of Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment at the Gender Ministry said that while the ‘3R’ programme fits in the journey of different initiatives of promoting gender equality, some challenges have been spotted.

"One of the challenges in the journey to achieving gender equality is the engagement of men and boys, and this was specified in one of the eight objectives in the national gender policy that was telling us to use gender transformative approaches.

"If unpaid care work is predominantly done by women and girls, it simply means that men and boys should be the ones mostly concerned by recognition, reduction and then redistribution,” Ngayaboshya said.

He added that one cannot think of equitable distribution of unpaid care work if there isn’t engagement of the private sector and the way public planners inform their planning and budgeting.