Resource: Women in Parliament
Media Type:
QuickTime Video
Length: 1m 31s
Size: 2.3 MB
Essential to the reconstruction of Rwanda after the genocide of 1994 was the formation of a new government. The women of Rwanda were an integral part of civic life post-genocide and their efforts have been recognized with formidable representation in Parliament. This video from Wide Angle provides an overview of the role of women in Rwandan government.
Alternate Media Available:
Transcript (Rich Text Format Document)
Supplemental Media Available:
Africa Map (GIF Image)
Rwanda Map (JPEG Image)
Loading reviews...Teachers' Domain, Women in Parliament, published August 22, 2008, retrieved on ,
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/wa08.socst.world.glob.parliament/
- Background Essay
- Questions for Discussion
- Standards
Print Background EssayIn the capital of Rwanda, Kigali, women have become involved in the highest levels of government. According to the new Rwandan constitution, ratified in 2003, 30 percent of the seats in parliament are to be reserved only for female candidates. Because of this, Rwanda is a world leader in representation by women in the national legislature.
The history of Rwanda is a complex one, steeped in a legacy of shifting colonial powers and ethnic conflict. First colonized by Germany in the 1890s, Rwanda subsequently fell under Belgian rule in the aftermath of World War I. The European colonists helped to widen tribal resentments between two ethnic groups living in the area, the Hutus and Tutsis. In the early days of colonization, German and then Belgian authorities gave preferential privileges to Tutsis, who were in the minority in the population. But when Rwanda began to demand independence from Belgium in the late 1950s, the colonists shifted allegiance and backed the previously sublimated Hutus. Tutsi loyalists attempted to stop this shift by killing key Hutu leaders. The payback was swift and brutal, and the Hutus launched the first of several pogroms against Tutsi people. In the years that followed, waves of Tutsi refugees left the country. By 1990 there were approximately 600,000 Rwandans living in exile.
In April 1994, Rwanda's then-powerful Hutu carried out a systematic slaughter of the Tutsi people. The aim was to stop invading Rwandan Tutsi revolutionaries and to remove their local support by liquidating their power base. The Hutu-led Mouvement Révolutionnaire Nationale pour le Développement (MRND — National Revolutionary Movement for Development) and its military carried out an attempt at genocide. In response, Tutsi revolutionaries took control of the country in July, stemming the violence. But in terms of genocide, most observers would agree that the Hutus were frighteningly successful — killing more than 800,000 people in a short three-month period.
Ten years after this horrific atrocity, the country had much healing to do - but had also become a model of feminist opportunity. With so many male Rwandans killed off by the 1994 genocide, nearly seventy percent of the remaining population was female. Recent developments in the government and legislature to place women in positions of power upturned a long history of female disempowerment and have made Rwanda one of the most progressive nations in the world in terms of gender equity. Women now participate at every level of government and occupy almost half the seats in the national parliament.
We assign reference terms to each statement within a standards document and to each media resource, and correlations are based upon matches of these terms for a given grade band. If a particular standards document of interest to you is not displayed yet, it most likely has not yet been processed by ASN or by Teachers' Domain. We will be adding social studies and arts correlations over the coming year, and also will be increasing the specificity of alignment.Source: Wide Angle: "Ladies First"
Resource Produced by:
Collection Developed by:
Collection Funded by:
