Rwandan women have given their nation new status as a world leader in gender equality, having achieved a 56 percent majority in Parliament. Women have reached this level of political power for many reasons, including the current government’s political will and women parliamentarians’ conscious decision to emphasize pre-colonial traditions of leadership as an alternative to prevailing patriarchal notions of women’s capacity. Highlighting women’s historical roles as behind-the-scenes advisors effectively promoted gender equality in the public sphere. Not only have women in Parliament taken leadership in promoting laws that protect women against gender-based violence, but also civil society organizations have participated in rebuilding and unifying the country following the trauma of horrific sexual violence and killing during the 1994 genocide. Interviews conducted in Kigali and Butare in 2009 and 2010 inform this study of perceptions of women’s power at the parliamentary and the grassroots levels. Women’s visibility in national government has not immediately translated into empowerment in the home, in agriculture, in the office or in social life. Formal education is key to providing girls and women the tools to analyze and dismantle remaining obstacles to gender equality in the professional, social and private spheres, building on their political achievement.

This Briefing examines the recent approach of the Government of Rwanda and Rwandan civil society to involve men in gender equality initiatives. Specifically, it will review the progress being made and highlight the barriers encountered through two concise case studies. The first case study analyses the drafting and passing of the Law on the Prevention and Punishment of Gender-Based Violence (Republic of Rwanda, 2009), which involved significant male participation both at the community level and via male parliamentarians. The second case study looks at the work of the Rwanda Men's Resource Centre (RWAMREC), which takes a grassroots approach to the sensitisation of men and women in civil society, in both rural and urban communities. These case studies highlight the progress made using targeted methods of engagement with male leaders both at the national and the village level, as well as persistent barriers to gender equality found in the attitudes of both women and men towards gender-based violence (GBV).keywords Gender-based violence, gender equality, engaging men, Rwanda, East Africa

This paper is developed from qualitative data exploring the metaphors used to describe women's leadership in differing cultural contexts. Metaphors are a useful communication tool, allowing us to understand an idea or concept through some other phenomenon. Understandably, studies of metaphor tend to focus on metaphors deriving from the English language and from Western cultures. Our everyday language literature abounds with metaphors that evoke images of the masculine-including of machines, war and fighting, competition, games and sport. Leadership is generally thought of as "a good thing," as something important, carried out by people with desirable attributes, such as courage and insight, or with attractive personalities and good communication skills. Metaphors used in discussing women's leadership in many countries may support this approach, but they do so by highlighting the obstacles women face, for example, the glass ceiling, glass cliff, sticky floors, and the labyrinth. This study attempts to break the mold, investigating the understanding of women's leadership as expressed in metaphors that is contextualized differently across the continents. Taking an interpretive approach, this study seeks to present leadership through the understanding of female leaders involved in the field of education broadly defined, from Rwanda and Bangladesh, who gave accounts of their metaphorical conceptualisation of leadership. Using narrative analysis, these accounts were analyzed to identify and interpret the metaphors emerging from descriptions of leadership experiences. The analysis shows that these leaders used metaphors determined by a dynamic interplay of personal, situational, and cultural factors. Somewhat surprisingly, the metaphors used to present leadership are not always based on a local cultural context, with some explicitly including references to European plants, which could be considered exotic. However, they are not metaphors that fit neatly into the taxonomies recognized in the literature. This study makes an important contribution to the literature on leadership, especially leadership in education. It is one of the few studies focussing on the stories of women from a non-Western background. The pool of case studies presented here is limited, but these metaphors represent thinking tools enabling a scholarly and imaginative understanding of women's leadership in education.

No abstract

In the original article, there was an error. Justine Mbabazi was named instead of Justine Uvuza in the Acknowledgments. The corrected paragraph appears below. "Without the interest from a number of women leaders in Rwanda and Bangladesh, this work would not have been possible. We express our thanks to the seven women who provided the written statements on which this study is based: Baby Rani Karmakar, Colette Nyinawumuntu, Dimitrie Sissi Mukanyiligira, Jebunnessa, Justine Uvuza, Rosette Adera, and Tajkera Khair." The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.