While the private sector employs 94 per cent of Rwanda’s labour force and is considered as the engine and backbone of the national development, its promotion of gender equality and accountability in the private sector remains low.

A May 2020 labour survey by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR), shows that male labour force participation rate stands at 63.4 per cent compared to 47 per cent for females.

The same survey indicates that female workforce participation in technical sectors which are most likely to be paying more is disproportionately low compared to male workforce participation in these sectors.

For example, in mining and quarrying, female participation is at 11 per cent compared to 89 per cent males; in transport 9 per cent compared to 91 per cent males; in the Energy sector 5 per cent compared to 95 per cent males and in construction 19 per cent compared to 81 per cent males.

In addressing the above gaps, the Gender Monitoring Office in its Five-year Strategic plan (2017-2022) aims to build sustainable gender accountability systems and mechanisms for the acceleration of gender equality in the private sector.

A programme dubbed ‘Gender Equality Seal Certification programme’ has been initiated to help companies lay out a gender-responsive work environment in the private sector.

So far, 20 private companies and four public institutions are participating in the GES initiative.

The l initiative supports companies to put in place a system of gender accountability at the work place focusing on the six main pillars.

They include increasing women’s role in decision-making at middle and upper management positions, detecting and eliminating gender-based pay gaps, developing and implementing policies to improve work-life balance, increasing women and men’s presence in occupational areas that are traditionally male and female-dominated, promoting the use of inclusive and non-sexist communication inside and outside the company, promoting zero tolerance to sexual harassment and gender-based violence in the workplace.

At the Rwanda Interlink Transport Company (RITCO), the entire workforce consists only 14 per cent of women.

Godfrey Nkusi, the Managing Director, said that the transport sector falls under the hospitality industry, which women are considered to work best at.

However, he noted that women rarely apply for positions at the company, with most of them working as booking clerks.

"We are aiming to see that our sector is dominated by women because then we will head the right way towards development. Surprisingly, there are some small transport businesses owned by women but with fewer women employed,” he says.

"This is blamed on the fact that the transport business has for a long time been regarded as one done by uneducated people.”

Out of the 143 drivers that the firm has, only three are women.

"We want to have more women, that is why we employed more booking clerks so that gradually, some of them will graduate from booking to driving. We are also giving them incentives to get higher categories of driving license so that they can graduate from clerks to driving,” he said.

For Francine Munyaneza, CEO and founder of Munyax Eco, a company specializing in providing renewable energy products, employers should consider positive discrimination, since in some sectors like energy, the gender gap is too wide.

"In the male dominated field, the men are already confident and experienced so it’s difficult to find equal skills between men and women, so we need to make a choice. At our company, we don’t recruit based on discrimination but if a woman’s skills are slightly lower we will hire them.

We adapt technical training for them as well as young entrants so that they can have the experience to compete with men,” she said.

She also pointed to the importance of technology to ease work for women especially those dealing with ‘heavy duty’.

Rose Rwabuhihi, Chief Gender Monitor at Gender Monitoring Office (GMO), during a workshop to share experience and discuss mechanisms for accelerating gender equality and accountability in the private sector recently, said that private sector firms, government institutions and development partners ought to come up with solutions and innovations in bridging the gender gap in workplaces.

She also called on all private businesses and institutions to embrace this initiative to help in accelerating efforts to bridge the gap.

"Companies need to come up with a conducive environment to enable women to get promotions in their workplaces. Women should not be discriminated against or placed at certain positions because of their gender,” she said.

"There is a need for capacity building for women, avail training opportunities for women even for teenage mothers, as well as invest in technology to ease work for both men and women and avoid wasting time that would be used to be productive.”