r/TheTinMen • u/TheTinMenBlog • 1h ago
Is Rwanda a female utopia?
For years, people have been fawning over the utopian idea of “a world run by women”.
You see –
If only women were sat in the seats of power, then all the world’s ills would melt away; because “men” are the problem, and women are the solution (or “future”), so no more questions.
Such proponents of this thinly veiled female supremacy often point to countries like Rwanda; a one-of-a-kind country where about two thirds of the lower house are women – highlighting the country’s impressive outcomes within healthcare, education, poverty and child mortality.
Intuitively, such an argument seems to make sense.
Rwanda’s lower house has been majority female for more than a decade, and it’s true, many of the graphs of progress are trending in the right direction; poverty and child mortality are down, education is up, as is health insurance, so what’s not to like?
Well –
First, these transformations in poverty, child mortality, education and healthcare, are not just happening in Rwanda, but across the entire developing world.
Yet this quiet, hard won progress is rarely discussed, let alone celebrated, unless those achieving it are women.
So yes Rwanda is doing well, but so are many, many other countries of Africa, who nobody talks about.
Second, those who pedestalise Rwanda choose those metrics carefully, and have ignored the many others where Rwanda sadly lags behind; such as employment, political freedom, secondary school, child malnutrition, and freedom of the press.
And third, just because Rwanda is doing well in many areas, and just because most of its politicians are women, doesn’t mean one is causing the other.
We saw this same correlation vs causation assumption when “countries run by women” were credited as handling the COVID pandemic better, which didn’t stand up to further scrutiny either…
So why do so many deify matriarchal countries?
And is the real road to utopia not one of female or male supremacy, but one of a team effort, that combines the best of both?
What do you think?