Source: New Times
About 3,652 women own manufacturing businesses countrywide, a new Gender Statistics Report 2013 has revealed.

According to the study, made public last week in Kigali, only 355 men run their own manufacturing businesses. The study was done to highlight the gaps between women and men and also provide a viable benchmark on the gender status in different sectors.

It was conducted by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda in collaboration with the Gender Monitoring Office and UN Women. In agriculture and fisheries, females constitute the majority at 81.9 per cent. In the area of decision making and governance, women make up 57.5 per cent of female parliamentarians in the Chamber of Deputies and 38.5 per cent in the Senate. Women in Rwanda also make up more than half of civil servants in health centres, representing 58.6 per cent, according to the findings.

Primary education female teachers constitute 51.6 per cent cof teh teaching staff, the survey added. Jessie Kalisa Umutoni, who owns G-Mart, a company that manufactures chalk in Rwanda said unlike in the past, women are now more daring and trying out business ownership, especially in the field of manufacturing. Umutoni said that owning a manufacturing business takes patience, a trait that's common among mostly women.

"Owning a manufacturing company,

which sometimes growss at a snail pace requires a lot of patience. This could be among the reasons we have more women in manufacturing as most men want to make quick cash which doesn't work that way for manufacturing business," Umutoni said.

She called upon more women not to be afraid to venture into the manufacturing world.

Where men dominate:

However, in most of the decision making and governance positions, men hold most of the positions. For instance, only 36.8 per cent of ministers are female compared to 63.2 per cent male. There are 50 per cent female state ministers and permanent secretaries. The survey also indicates that male ambassadors constitute 76 per cent compared to 23.8 percent women.

In education, the percentage of female teachers for secondary education is just 27.7 per cent. Only 5.9 per cent females are rectors in public institutions, according to the findings. At 95 per cent, male also constitute the majority of the country's Vice Rectors in higher institutions of learning

Yusuf Murangwa, the Director General of the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda, noted that disseminating the gender statistics report will fundamentally contribute to evidence-based planning, monitoring and evaluation of the strides that Rwanda makes in women empowerment.

"Whereas there are challenges in gender as shown in the statistics, there is a lot of progress as well. We hope that these statistics will be helpful for policy makers to have dialogue on different gender issues portrayed in this report to promote gender," he said. According to the report, public institution boards, governors and mayors also have the highest percentage of males more than women.

It shows there is only 15.7 per cent female directors general and executive secretaries of public institutions, while the males make up 84.3 per cent. The literacy rate for females above 15 years stands at 76.9 per cent while males stand at 80 per cent. The report also shows that men constitute 54.5 per cent of civil servants.

Women also make up of 43 percent of the Judges in high court and 44 per cent in the lower courts. The average annual population growth rate of Rwanda is 2.6 percent and the country's population density increased from 321 in 2002 to 416 people per square kilometre in 2012 at national level. The country's population is 10.5 million.

• Rwanda