Advancing gender equality in Rwanda’s economy

Context

Rwanda promotes gender equality and has made significant progress in empowering women. However, challenges persist for women in the business world.

Women participate in the labour force at a lower rate, 52 per cent compared to 67 per cent for men, and often handle most household responsibilities. While women own 51 per cent of small businesses, they make up only 34 per cent of registered companies earning over 10,000 Rwandan Francs (RWF), approximately seven Euros, per day. Like businesses led by men, women-led small and medium-sized enterprises struggle with limited access to markets and finding skilled staff. Additionally, traditional gender norms restrict women entrepreneurs from accessing finance, networking, and mentorship.

Within the workplace, gender discrimination, including sexual harassment, hinder women's career advancement. These factors affect their performance, impact their mental health, and limit their representation in leadership positions.

Objective

Rwanda successfully promotes quality employment and new job opportunities for women and enhances the competitiveness of women-led businesses.

Approach

The project uses a gender-transformative approach to tackle challenges faced by women employees and entrepreneurs in the business world.

It targets specific gender-related barriers that limit women's economic participation. To achieve its objectives, the project focuses on two main areas.

Area one – improving working conditions for women employees:

• collaborating with businesses to enhance working conditions for women
• assisting companies to implement gender and diversity management practices
• developing policies that promote work-life balance, increase the proportion of women in decision-making positions, eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace, and address gender-based pay gaps.

Area two – supporting women-led businesses:

• offering short-term training and coaching on technical topics
• providing business development advice
• establishing long-term partnerships with individual women-led businesses
• delivering financial and technical assistance to existing initiatives of companies, civil society, and the Rwandan government that focus on reducing gender-specific barriers to female entrepreneurship.

Last update: July 2024