A poster on the women economic empowerment surve

Abbott, Pamela

English

IDS OpenDocs

Women Economic Empowerment  Survey (WORK IN PROGESS ) 
Main objectives 
•To provide a review of what is known
about women’s economic empowerment 
internationally and in Rwanda; 
•To provide examples of good practice for
the economic empowerment of women 
•To understand the drivers of Women
Economic Empowerment in Rwanda. 
•To identify characteristics of
economically empowered women. 
•To understand the linkages between
informal employment, poverty and 
gender inequality amongst women in 
Rwanda; 
•To make evidenced informed
recommendations to the Government, 
Official Development Partners and other 
stakeholders to further develop  policy  
for the economic empowerment of 
women. 
Research project was funded by the Ministry of Trade and Industry 
Global perspective 
• Research has shown that women economic
empowerment is fundamental to poverty 
reduction. 
• 70% of 1.2 billion of people living in poverty
in the world are women. 
• 2/3 of World’s work is done by women but
only earn 10% of world’s income 
Where we are in the Research? 
• Desk research/ Literature review –
completed 
• Data collection /Field work - completed
• Data coding and entry - completed
• Analysis and writing of Research
report-Work in progress 
What the literature tells us! 
• There is Insufficient data disaggregated by sex
• Gender is not mainstreamed because it is not a
national priority 
• Even when women are consulted, their voices are
not used to inform policy priorities and spending 
plans/budgeting. 
• Some policy makers in governments do not
understand gender and thus do not know how to 
implement gender fair policies. 
• Civil society is not consulted and when they are
consulted their views are not put to good use 
• Women activists don’t have a strong base to
influence governments 
• International agencies play bigger roles in
advocating for gender to be on national agenda 
• Research in India showed that laws and
institutions can play a big role in promoting 
women empowerment, but complex cultural 
barriers that  underlie gender imbalance in many 
societies make it difficult for these institutions to 
be effective (patriarchy).  
Rwandan Gender Context 
Rwanda is ranked one of the African sub-Saharan 
 countries that have made commendable achievements  
in promoting gender equality and empowerment. 
The Government of Rwanda has recognized women as key players in nation building 
Gender reform policies  
Ministry of gender and Family Promotion established in (1992,then called Ministry of 
family promotion and women promotion) 
The Matrimonial and Succession Law (1999) legalizes equality of ownership in marriage 
and inheritance. 
The National Constitution (2003) promotes equality between men and women and 
mandates that 30 per cent of seats in all decision making bodies are reserved for women 
Gender is a cross cutting issue in both Vision 2020 (2003) and the Economic Development 
and Poverty Reduction Strategy (2007) 
Land law (2005) 
Gender based violence law (2008) 
Girls Education policy (2008) 
The Gender Monitoring Office (2009)  
Labor law (2009) 
National Gender policy ,new 2010  
The National Women’s Council (2011, new law) ensures that the voice of women at grass 
roots is heard. 
• Women now have the right to purchase their own land
and inherit 
• They can own bank accounts and secure loans in their
names 
• Rwandan women compared to those in other countries
in the region benefit from gender equality programs to a 
greater extent 
• there has been Increased women ambitions to invest
and operate business in Rwanda 
• Women are starting to move out of the traditional
sectors like farm and trade to communication and 
information technology, tourism and also petroleum, 
construction.  
Contribution of Gender Reforms in Rwanda 
Challenges 
Women employees in the formal public sector represent 
34 %  There are no statistics of women engaged in formal 
private sector, but 83.6 percent of women still work in 
agriculture. 
Women are moving out of agriculture at a slower rate 
than men and this means that women are more likely to 
live in poverty than men. 
Women are also more likely than men to work as 
dependent family workers which mean they have no 
income of their own.  
Women have difficulty in getting access to credit (only 16 
percent of women having access to credit in 2008).  
Lack of decision making power over the household 
resources. 
Cultural beliefs embedded in Rwandan society as 
elsewhere still discourage women from taking big risks in 
business and other career. 
Non financial challenges  
Lack of time saving technology for domestic and 
productive activities,  
Day care facilities for young children 
Lack of skills training 
Access to market  
Poor negotiation skills of women to use in their 
cooperatives and associations to negotiate for credit 
facilities. 
This work is licensed under a 
Creative Commons 
Attribution – NonCommercial - NoDerivs 4.0 License. 
To view a copy of the license please see: 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 
This is a download from the BLDS Digital Library on OpenDocs 
http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/ 


Women economic empowerment survey

https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/20.500.12413/9653/1/Women%20Economic%20Empowerment%20%20Survey.pdf

Women economic empowerment survey

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

IDS OpenDocs