By Palash R. Ghosh: Subscribe to Palash's RSS feed
January 3, 2012 1:01 PM EST
Women have made significant advances in politics over the past few decades, with females having served as the head of state in many prominent countries, including Britain, India, Germany, Pakistan, and others.
However, males tend to outnumber females in most parliaments (democratically-elected or otherwise) around the world.
Indeed, there is only nation on earth in which females represent the majority of parliamentarians – and the identity of this state may be highly surprising.
In 2008, just fourteen years after a horrific genocidal civil war killed an astounding 800,000 people in a three-month period of unspeakable bloodshed, the tiny central African nation of Rwanda elected the world's first women-dominated legislature.
While Rwanda’s post-genocide Constitution set aside at least 30 percent representation for women in parliament, they initially held 44 out of 80 seats (a 55 percent rate).
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During the 2008 election, a Rwandan female voter named Anne Kayitesi explained to BBC: "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."
Women also grabbed one-third of all cabinet positions as well as the plum jobs of Supreme Court chief and speaker of parliament.
As of November 2011, 56.3 percent of the Rwandan parliament comprised women, making it, by the far, the most female-friendly national legislature on the planet, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).
Women have also apparently taken a key role in restoring the nation's economy, particularly its coffee-growing sector (with scarce natural resources nor much manufacturing, agriculture is the dominant sector).
In the wake of the devastating 1994 war, Rwandan women have aggressively moved to the forefront of rebuilding the nation.
In 2008, Agnes Matilda Kalibata, minister of state in charge of agriculture, told western media: "Rwanda's economy has risen up from the genocide and prospered greatly on the backs of our women, Bringing women out of the home and fields has been essential to our rebuilding. In that process, Rwanda has changed forever. . . . We are becoming a nation that understands that there are huge financial benefits to equality."
Indeed, there are many reports of women in Third World countries, including Rwanda, making better decisions than men with regard to household investments, family finances, etc.
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.”
The women must be doing something right.
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