Nothing should hold back the Rwandan woman

A report released this week by the Gender Monitoring Office, on the status of gender mainstreaming, shows that in certain fields including, leadership, academia and business the men are dominating despite provisions for equal opportunities.Women in Rwanda enjoy more recognition than in most countries, and their representation in all spheres is a jealously guarded right.The constitution guarantees them a minimum 30 per cent representation, and according to the statistics released by GMO, they surpassed that quota though in some field they still lag behind.One such area, according to the report, was access to loans to value adding rural enterprises, which percentage stood at a 12-7% and those with coffee washing stations were a paltry 6.5%.While these were the lowest figures in the survey, they are doing exceptionally well, no better than the world famous percentage in parliament and they make up 66.7 of the Executive Committee of Kigali City.Women have slowly but surely starting shedding off the traditional mindset that they were only meant for the kitchen and raising children.Today’s Rwandan woman is a confident and equal partner and not tethered to traditional beliefs; The sky is her limit. The quicker the men, especially in rural settings, understand this, the higher women will climb.But women should also take the leap of faith, and know that there is no “male only” domain - that, as they say, is history.

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Nothing should hold back the Rwandan woman