Reconstructing Womanhood in Post-Conflict Rwanda

After reviewing women’s different roles in Rwanda during the genocide, this chapter provides a short history of their involvement in the post-conflict reconstruction process and their representation in government. A third section lays out some concerns about women’s situation in Rwanda, despite their exponential integration into the former structures of governance. It concludes by arguing that the only way to make sense of women’s increased representation in the social context of post-conflict Rwanda is to understand it as embedded in a discursive symbolic politics of gender, influenced not only by women’s roles as victims and as perpetrators in the genocide but also by traditional notions of gender. It presents a case that women’s increased presence in the Rwandan political arena can be seen not only as women reconstructing Rwanda, but also as Rwanda’s reconstructing its images of women and femininity.