“There are quite a few theories for this and certainly one of them is that after the genocide there has been much lower numbers of men who are able and willing to be working. So that has changed the dynamics,” explained Saadia Zahidi of the World Economic Forum.
The 1994 genocide, aimed at the country’s minority Tutsi population, saw more than 1 million people slaughtered by extremist Hutus. The widows who were left behind banded together and demanded power.
They then changed Rwanda’s constitution to require that women hold at least 30 per cent of top political roles. Now the country’s parliament has the highest percentage of women in the world, Zahidi says.
Rwanda also performs better than Canada (and many other more developed nations) when it comes to women’s participation in the work force and wage equality.
Canada’s gender equality shortcomings
Globally, women are only now earning what men earned nearly a decade ago: $11,000 annually, on average. Meanwhile, men’s average pay has nearly doubled to $21,000 worldwide.
In Canada, the estimated earned income is $40,000 for men, $35,014 for women, on average.
The wage gap is one of our biggest areas where progress needs to be made, based on the report. The other is the lack of women in leadership roles.
A lack of female representation on the political front also weighed us down, but the findings were based on our previous government. Zahidi thinks we’ll see a boost in next year’s report.
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