The Nation That Elects The Most Women Is…..
Not the U.S. We aren’t nearly as advanced as we’d like to think, or I should say, as the GOP would like to brainwash us into believing. In fact, we’re embarrassingly far down on the list of nations who elect women. Coming in at the embarrassing number 84?on the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU)?list, only 18?percent of elected female politicians in the U.S. are women.?But one nation stands out as a beacon of hope for women in public service. The country that elects the most women and makes up the highest percentage of elected women is the tiny central African nation of Rwanda.
A whopping 64 percent of the nation’s lower house of Parliament are women, making Rwanda the only nation on earth in which women represent the majority of the parliament. The women MPs include former genocide survivors, rebels, war widows, and peasant farmers.
The U.S. government isn’t alone in its gross under-representation of women. Percentages in developed countries:?France (18.9 percent); United Kingdom (22 percent); Greece (17.3 percent) and the United States (16.8 percent).
In addition to controlling the parliament, Rwandan women grabbed one-third of cabinet positions and the positions of Supreme Court chief (similar to our Supreme Court Justice) and speaker of parliament (similar to House Speaker John Boehner’s position). The head of police is also a woman and the majority of Rwanda’s prison governors are women.
Rwanda hasn’t always been the nation that elects the most women. After the devastating 1994 genocide that killed 800,000 people in a three-month period, Rwandan women became influential figures on several fronts, particularly politics. When the killing ended, many widows were left destitute because existing laws didn’t permit women to inherit property or land. Former Tutsi rebel fighter?Aloisea Inyumba is a senator in the upper house of parliament and served as the minister for women and family.
“After the genocide there were property disputes,” Inyumba?explains, “so we worked on a strong family bill. For the first time the women of this country were given rights to inherit. Traditionally, if a woman married a man, the property belonged to him. If your husband died, the property would go to the in-laws. This bill has become a legal protection for families. Women can now inherit, women can own property. A girl child and a boy child have equal entitlement to inheritance.”
Rwanda’s post-genocide Constitution states that 30 percent of parliament must be women. From All Africa:
Observers attribute women’s impressive show in the elections to political parties’ decision to give both genders equal chances of making it to parliament as opposed to past tendencies when men would largely occupy more strategic positions on party electoral lists.
For instance, during the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) primaries at the grassroots it was the party’s unwritten rule for the voters to pick both a man and a woman in keeping with the gender equality principle.
Subsequently, both sexes were practically allocated equal number of seats on the party’s 80-member list of parliamentary candidates, which also included eight from its four coalition partners.
A female Rwandan voter named Anne Kayitesi told BBC after the 2008 election:
“The problems of women are understood much better, much better by women themselves. You see men, especially in our culture, men used to think that women are there to be in the house, cook food, look after the children… but the real problems of a family are known by a woman and when they do it, they help a country to get much better.” (International?Business Times)
Also from the IB Times:
“Winnie Byanyima, director of the United Nations Development Program’s gender team, once told reporters: We have overwhelming evidence from almost all the developing regions of the world that [investment in] women make better economics.?
This isn’t just theory. While much of the developed world suffers recession, Rwanda’s economy doubled in size between 2001 and 2010, according to the World Bank. It expanded by 8.8 percent in 2011 alone. ?
How does being the nation that elects the most women affect the social condition of the country??Daphrose Nyirasafari, national program officer for UNFPA, the United Nation’s family planning and reproductive health organization, told The Guardian U.K. that while there were previously prolific crimes against Rwandan women such as rape and domestic violence, male domination of women has changed, even in rural areas. Girls are also now sent to schools, something that was rare previously.
African countries dominate the list of nations with a large female presence in government.?South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Seychelles, Tanzania, and Uganda are all in the top 20 on the list.
What will it take for women in the U.S. to become fed up and take a more active and aggressive role in their own governance? Will it take a genocide for us to make this happen? For us to get out and vote? Let’s hope not. We can do this now. We can get women who will fight for equality, women, and children into our government.
h/t Liberal American?Kat Wise??
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Tiffany Willis is the founder and editor-in-chief of Liberal America. An unapologetic member of the Christian Left, she has spent most of her career actively working with ?the least of these? and disadvantaged and oppressed populations. She’s passionate about their struggles. To stay on top of topics she discusses,?like her?Facebook page,?follow her on Twitter, or?connect with her via LinkedIn. She also has a?grossly neglected personal blog?and a?literary quotes blog that is a labor of love. Find her somewhere and join the discussion.
