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4.0 Gender in Rwanda's PRSPs.

Article Excerpt
4.1 A gender analysis of indicators for the key PRSP sectors.

Rwanda had an estimated population of about 8.4 million inhabitants (54% women) in 2003, growing at 2.8 % per year. Currently, women head 40% of the total households. Women represent 56.3 % of the labour force, compared to 43.7% of men's participation. A large proportion of women (58.4%) are in the agricultural sector, mostly in food production, processing and marketing. Women occupy only 34.6% percent of jobs in the public sector.

According to the Household Living Survey Condition of 2000, 60% of the adult equivalent population lived in poverty and 42% in extreme poverty. Looking at the level of poverty by household, 57% of the households lived below the poverty line, and 62% of female-headed households were below the poverty line compared to 54% of the male-headed households.

In terms of employment distribution, the overwhelming majority of the country's working population is employed in agriculture, working as own account farmers. Both the poor and the non-poor have moved away from agricultural occupations in roughly equal proportions, although it appears that men have been able to move away from agriculture at a higher rate than women. See Table 4.1 below, where larger proportions of men in Rwanda have moved into skilled service.

4.2 Gender mainstreaming into the PRSPs

4.2.1 The process

Under the first PRSP in 2000, gender was one of the crosscutting issues. Independent and self-evaluations of the implementation of PRSP1 showed the limited achievements in gender mainstreaming then.

A very small number of sectors had, or developed, sectoral policies reflecting gender equality commitments and objectives and translated those into gender mainstreamed sectoral strategies and plans. These sectors, which also participated on a pilot basis in the Rwanda Gender Budget Initiative (RGBI), were the most effective in achieving, tracking, and reporting gender equality results. They thus have a solid foundation on which to build on during the current Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EPDRS)implementation. Overall, however there was an absence of sectoral gender analysis and gender equality objectives/targets. The ability to establish gender-disaggregated baselines, targets, and indicators and to monitor gender budgeting and expenditure reflected a lack of gender-disaggregated data and analysis as well as weak capacity and institutionalization. There was an absence of sectoral gender equality advocates and a lack of clear designation of ultimate responsibility for ensuring gender equitable progress.

To sum up, many of the fundamental quality standards for effective gender mainstreaming were lacking in most of the sectors, so there was a considerable gap between gender equality results envisioned and achieved.

During the formulation of the EDPRS, efforts were put to...

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