The Indian government has made a strong pitch for the reservation of one-third of seats for women in Parliament and state legislative Assemblies, with the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Amendment) Bill, 2023, introduced by Union Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal in the Lok Sabha today (September 19).
The current Lok Sabha (2019-2024) has the highest-ever representation of women Members of Parliament at any point in India, with 78 MPs in the 545-member House (around 14 per cent). Globally, the average for women in parliament is around 24 per cent and the country with the highest percentage of women legislators in its Parliament is Rwanda, with 49 of its 80 Lower House seats occupied by women (around 61 per cent).
Why Rwanda has a high representation of women in its Parliament
The story of women’s active political participation in Rwanda goes back in history. Located in central Africa, Rwanda came under German and Belgian rule in the 19th and 20th centuries. It gained independence in 1962 but continued to battle ethnic tensions between the majority community, the Hutus, and the minority Tutsis. Under colonial rule, people had to carry ID cards identifying their ethnicity, hardening the divisions.
Rwanda is marked in red on Africa’s map. (Via Wikimedia Commons)
The Tutsis had long dominated matters of administration in Rwanda. But amid demands for independence, the Hutus sought to assert themselves. Between 1957 and 1959, Hutu political parties were formed and Tutsi King Kigeri V, together with tens of thousands of Tutsis, was forced into exile in neighbouring countries to escape ethnic violence.
In 1990, Tutsi rebel forces, such as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), attempted an invasion of Rwanda. A peace deal was signed between RPF and Rwandan President J Habyarimana in 1993 but everything would change in 1994, when a plane carrying the President and the President of Burundi was shot down, killing both. It has not been established whether the attack was carried out by Tutsi or Hutu extremists, to derail the peace talks.
With people egged on through hate speeches and political propaganda, a period of genocidal killings extended over 100 days, and more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred at the hands of Hutu militias. Many more died in the years that followed, and others were permanently displaced.
How did the Rwandan genocide impact women?
Scores of women faced gender-based violence in the form of sexual assaults and honour killings, but the targets and participants of fatal violence were primarily men. As a result, 70 per cent of the population was composed of women after the war.
With the kind of traditional, male-led society prevalent in Rwanda until then, many families found themselves lacking a head of the household due to the deaths of the men in the violent conflict. From a legal perspective too, women lacked the ability to have the land and assets of their husbands transferred to them at the time.
In this scenario, a major overhaul of the society became a necessity. According to the 2009 paper ‘Women in Rwandan Politics and Society’, published in the International Journal of Sociology: “The Rwandan government put forward a bold gender equality initiative, culminating in the 2003 constitution, which gave women a 30 percent quota in all decision-making organs. A Ministry of Gender was set up, the first of its kind in Africa. The Inheritance Law… aimed to give women access to their own property and to enable them to conduct business and enter into contracts in their own right, implying a fundamental restructuring of the rights of women.” It added that the use of quotas as a “gender equality strategy” was something that a number of African governments had used, but Rwanda went the furthest.
A 2018 UN Women article explained that this included 24 of the 80 seats in the Lower House of Parliament. “Those seats are elected by an innovative special electoral college composed of voters from local women’s councils and district councils,” it said.
Has it translated into gains for women in other fields?
Two decades have passed since the 2003 Constitution came into effect.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index, in 2023, Rwanda ranked 12th out of 146 countries. It pointed to better performances in the fields of political representation and health while noting that areas of employment and economic opportunities/involvement needed improvement.
The International Journal of Sociology paper concluded that the impact of such transformational changes has been mixed. On one hand, it has led to undeniable progress in terms of inclusion, with women at the top levels of government. Laws on issues like education, gender-based violence, and rural poverty – which matter to women in particular – have been passed.
However, it is often elite, foreign-educated women who are able to take advantage of such changes. “The majority of women in Rwandan society struggle with heavy workloads and the threat of violence and although there have been brave efforts to improve the educational participation of girls, many of them do not even get the basic schooling that is available,” the paper said.
Also, a significant percentage of the population still holds traditional ideas of gender roles. The changes in law are still recent, compared to age-old traditions. The paper asks, “How far can gender equality policies work if the general population (including many women) are not behind them?”
Finally, a circumstance peculiar to Rwanda is its political climate. Since the war, President Paul Kagame of the RPF has been in power and while he is believed to have popular support, critics accuse him of ruling with an authoritarian streak, not allowing dissent. According to DW, when businesswoman and politician Diane Rwigara wanted to challenge Kagame in the 2017 presidential election, the electoral commission did not accept her candidacy.
The presence of RPF-aligned women and their politics, then, largely fits within the ruling party’s politics in general. But it has also been argued that authoritarianism has allowed for provisions on gender equality to come about in the first place.
Finally, for the gains to be sustained, UN Women argues that other barriers will have to be tackled, such as the “limited enforcement of gender equality laws, lack of campaign financing, lower levels of education and technical skills, as well as persistent gender stereotypes and patriarchal attitudes.”
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Publish date : 2023-09-20 03:00:00
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