Gender Roles And Women’S Socio-Economic Empowerment In Rural Communities Of Rwanda. Case Of Muhanga District
Janet Mukabalisa
Department of Development Studies, kigali independent University, Rwanda
Abstract
The research paper under review is entitled Gender Roles and Women Socio-Economic Empowerment in Rural Communities in Rwanda: Case of Muhanga District and it focuses on gender roles in determining the empowerment of women in rural Rwanda. The rationale was to determine the effect of old gender roles attitudes, household labour division, accessibility to productive resource and community gender norms on socio-economic empowerment of women. The social role theory, Gender and development theory, and Feminist Empowerment Theory helped direct the study focusing on the interaction between structural, cultural, and agency-related factors in empowerment.The convergent parallel design incorporating both the quantitative and qualitative methodologies was adopted. The sample size included 383 rural rural women in Muhanga District formed the target population with a survey analysis of these population, along with focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Data analyses were done by utilizing descriptive statistics, principal component analysis, correlation and regression models. Results showed that no significant predictors of empowerment were traditional gender role attitudes and access to productive resources, the division of household labor had negative impacts on empowerment and community and cultural gender norms turned out to be the most important positive predictors ( 0.621, p < 0.001). The model has described 23.6% of the variation in empowerment indicating the key role played by community norms and housework.The researchers conclude that even with the progressive gender policies in Rwanda, women in rural areas are still limited by their cultures and household chores. It proposes that gender equality laws should be more firmly enforced, communities sensitized to change norms, women cooperatives empowered and interventions at the household level should be implemented to facilitate shared responsibilities and decision-making.
References
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