Reducing gender imbalance

The Gender Monitoring Office (GMO)is developing a new tool that will help improve the level of gender equality in the country.Following several worrying statistics that indicated that women were still left out in most of the key positions, the office is now up for better ways to change the situation in all sectors.The Chief Gender Monitor, Oda Gasinzigwa said, this is part of the efforts to advance equality and equity between women and men and that there is need to generate accurate and relevant data on the status of Gender relation, women and men.GMO noted that, despite the high political will for gender equality, there still remains a gap between policy and practice in regard to gender mainstreaming across sectors. “The lack of a monitoring and evaluation system, the gender gaps are persistent in the Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy sector in both private and public sectors,” Gasinzigwa explained to The New times. She adds that the indicators will be helpful for accountability purposes.The office has to date developed indicators in five different sectors, which are Gender Based Violence, Agriculture, Infrastructure, Private Sector and Governance.However, GMO is to develop sensitive indicators and gender baseline situations in various sectors.Gasinzigwa underscored that the gender office has completed formulation of sensitive indicators in four sectors, including trade and commerce, social protection employment and water and sanitation.”The indicators will help GMO in monitoring and evaluation,” she told The New Times, adding that the Sectors have also agreed to draw statistics that will be compiled in the forthcoming report and integrated in the general statistics.According to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Labour and the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda, 54.5 per cent of civil servants in the country were men and 45.5 per cent were women. This, according to GMS successfully comforms with Government’ commitment to promote women’s participation in decision making.However, at the level of high decision making organs, gender equality is said to be improving with women making up above 40 per cent of permanent secretaries and Supreme Court judges and above 30 per cent of Senators and Deputies that chair standing committees. However, there is a discrepancy in positions traditionally held by men, which are hitherto still male dominated. In this regard, over 90 per cent of all district mayors and 83.3 per cent of Vice Mayors of Economic Affairs are men, while 83.3 per cent of all Vice Mayors of Social Affairs are women.The report adds that the key positions such as heads of learning institutions, hospital directors and senior officers of the police force to mention a few, show big gender gaps with “very few women.”In the education sector, the gender gaps increase with the level with primary school men equalling women. However, in the secondary school and higher education levels, men occupy at least 70 per cent of the posts.Age statistics on the other hand indicate that women aged 20 to 44 years are catching up with men aged 20 to 44 while women above 45 years are under-represented vis-à-vis men above 45 years.The Gender Monitoring Office now believes Gender Sensitive Indicators that have been formulated would help to bridge the gap in the four crucial sectors of government.