Women in business

According to the 2008 Doing Business Women in Africa report, Rwanda has the third highest percentage of women entrepreneurs of any country in Africa. It also found that forty-one percent of businesses are run by women. This and many other factual evidences give credit to the often negated role of women in business. Traditionally, business has been for men while women were left to the role of homemaking. The struggle for gender equality which resulted in equal rights to voting and education for both men and women has resulted in a group of highly qualified and very professional women who can compete favourably with men in the work place. Today, evidence indicates that women may be better suited to running businesses than men despite the heavy advantage of the old boy’s business network that has always favoured men and discouraged the involvement of women in business. In Norway, it is now compulsory for all companies listed on the stock exchange to have women make at least 40 % of their board directors. The example is being followed in many western countries although where the policies are not enforced little progress is being achieved in the right direction. However in Africa, women are taking up the initiative to start businesses as societies assist women to remove age-old stereotypes that reduce the woman to a washing machine. Following 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, 70% of the Rwanda population was female so government had to actively create avenues for women to evolve and be able to get their families out of conditions of the poverty. Gahaya Links is one such success story by Rwandan women. Run by the sisters Janet Nkubana and Joy Ndungutse the business now employs thousands of women from across the country and together they have elevated the traditional Kinya-rwanda baskets into an item for collectors and a path for peacemaking, hence the name, ‘peace baskets’. “I have survivors, I have widows, I have women whose husbands are in prison. To see them sitting under one roof weaving and doing business together is a huge achievement…these women are now together, earning an income. It is amazing,” says Janet in the Women in Africa report. In fact women may be best suited for business because of their ability to multitask more effectively and make high tension decisions. Nigel Nicholson, a professor of organizational behaviour at London Business School and author of Family Wars says that women can have a unique role in business that makes them well suited for avoiding greater conflicts in business. “It’s unfortunate that women aren’t more involved in family businesses.” Why? He says that they have an intelligence that men don’t have. They’re good listeners and they have teamwork skills. In those roles, women function as a Chief Emotional Officer. The role is desperately needed in some family companies as well as in business in general. Data proves that woman as powerful, decisive, multi-task-oriented personalities are well suited for the competitive world of big business. Women have been managing important portfolios, be it on the political scenario or economic development. Think of people like the late Benazir Bhutto or Margaret Thatcher who have to balance family and politics. It is no wonder that Rwanda’s continental model for a large percentage of women in business is replicated all through the political scene and in national managerial and leadership positions which goes further to show that the multi-tasking woman miles ahead of men in taking responsibility and juggling it with family duties. The Rwandan woman’s spirit may have quickly become a national trademark but evidence shows that women all over the world have a knack for survival. “We have overwhelming evidence from almost all the developing regions of the world that investments in women make better economics,” said Winnie Byanyima, director of the United Nations Development Program’s gender team. A Washington Post article concurs that in Bangladesh the Grameen Bank has focused its poverty-busting microloans on women, with success rates far higher for female than for male borrowers. Microloan programs in Africa, Asia and Latin America have shown similar results. A major study on poverty in Brazil published in the Journal of Human Resources in 1990 showed that the effect of money managed by women in poor households was 20 times more likely to be spent on improving conditions in the home than money managed by men. kelviod@yahoo.com