Global leadership: In Rwanda, women run the show

Global leadership: Rwanda, a tiny African nation, has the highest proportion of women leaders.

When Béata Murekatete was growing up in rural Rwanda, she never would have imagined she'd end up working for Parliament.

She's not a lawmaker, but everything she does touches the law. She's a researcher, and she spends her days in villages around Rwanda researching reports for parliamentarians about issues with which ordinary Rwandans might need a helping hand.

Tiny Rwanda, in the center of Africa, is the only country in the world with a female majority in Parliament. That statistic alone, says the young mother, inspires her – and her generation.

"This motivates our small daughters; it motivates our sisters. They know that they can do what our brothers do," Ms. Murekatete says. "We do not fear to compete with men. That's a good step for women in Rwanda."

The country made history in 2008, when 56 percent of the politicians it sent to Parliament were women, far surpassing a national quota set at 30 percent. Two years before that, women were elected to a third of all mayoral-level posts. Women lead a third of Rwanda's ministries. They protect public assets – the head of the tax authority and the auditor general are women. Every police office in Rwanda has a "gender desk" to take reports of violence against women, as does the national Army.

Sen. Marie Mukantabana, vice president of the Rwandan Senate and chair of the Women's Parliamentary Forum, says the ascent of women in politics reflects their unique characteristics: "Women have integrity. Women have particular natural qualities; they listen well; they respect others, not just other women, but all Rwandese…. There are things we are better at than men."

Among them, she says, is keeping honest. There's a widespread belief, in Rwanda and outside, that women are less corrupt than men. There's not necessarily hard evidence that this stereotype is true, says Shirley Randell, director of the Center for Gender, Culture and Society at the Kigali Institute of Education. But there is evidence, she says, that Rwandans think it's accurate – in public and in private: "They put women on the counters as bank tellers; women handle money in the supermarket." She thinks Rwandans across the board acknowledge that women are more responsible with money.

"If women earn money, and their husbands don't take it, it goes toward the family, toward education, toward health. With most men – not always, but most – it goes toward banana beer," she says.

But behind their soothing image, Rwanda's female politicians are using political muscle to get things done. Women in Parliament have been credited with pushing through laws protecting women and children against domestic and gender-based violence and establishing women's rights to own land and inherit property.

The political ascent of women may stem from Rwanda's troubled history. The 1994 genocide killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days; millions of Hutus fled the country after the genocide.

To Ms. Mukantabana, the horror meant the country had little choice but to try trusting women with what had traditionally been men's work. "Men with power before brought catastrophe," she says. "After, women were accepted to have power in the country as well."

But Dinah Musindarwezo, gender equality specialist at the Norwegian People's Aid offices here, says the emergence of women leaders reflected an urgent practicality. Women are believed to have made up 70 percent of Rwanda's postgenocide population, and thousands – widowed, abandoned, or orphaned – became heads of their households, a new phenomenon in a previously patriarchal society. As necessary as that development may have been it doesn't explain the rise of women to positions of power. That, Ms. Musindarwezo and others agree, can only come with political will at the highest levels. "Gender roles changed because women, not just men, were breadwinners, but that doesn't necessarily lead to political participation or a chance, as a woman, to be a minister," she says.

In fact, Musindarwezo cautions, logical fallacies lurk everywhere in a discussion about women's role in politics. "Being a woman does not automatically make you gender sensitive or willing to work for gender equality," she says.

Nor does it mean you're always going to promote – or even agree on – what is good for women. Last year, Parliament passed a law cutting maternity leave for women in half.

"People asked, 'How could such a law pass with a majority 56 percent of women in Parliament?' " says Musindarwezo.

But in spite of the symbolic importance of the numbers, female politicians in Rwanda don't necessarily see women as a discrete constituency.

"These women are at the top, but they do not descend. We do not see them in the village. They do not know how ordinary women in Rwanda live," says one woman in Kigali who asked that her name be withheld. "Women in Parliament do not make a big difference in our lives."

Musindarwezo agrees female politicians need to be held to greater accountability to female citizens. "They're not answerable to women," she says. "We don't have a direct line between women in communities and the leadership."