Paper short abstract:

In the context of extensive gender and class policies in Rwanda, middle-class women are central actors in negotiating gender equality including both feminist and conservative notions. They create the image of the new Rwandan woman which challenges mainstream ideas of gender equality and feminity.

Paper long abstract:

With its 64 % of female representatives in the parliament, Rwanda's government has positioned itself as a worldwide leading actor in gender politics. Gender equality is considered a cross cutting issue in the ambitious development plan Vision 2020. Intertwined with the emergence of a middle class, these gender policies transform notions of feminity and role models for women and girls. This paper is about these "New Rwandan women". Highly educated, urban middle-class women are not only the primal beneficiaries of the gender and class policies, they are also central actors in defining new roles for themselves and in reshaping notions of feminity. In doing so, they navigate through ideas of gender equality and modernity as well as restrictive societal expectations, which persist despite all efforts to change "the traditional mindset". Based on data from biographic interviews I argue that middle-class women may sometimes be submitted to these conservative ideas from outside, but that they often choose freely to comply with them, for instance respecting the husband as chef de famille, taking care of the household and the children, or displaying virginity. Middle-class women claim they live the right combination of feminism and morality. This way, they distinguish themselves from uneducated, rural women, who - in their eyes - did not understand the concept of gender equality properly. What, then, does gender equality mean for Rwandan middle-class women? How do they define feminism? In this paper, I will shed light on these questions and thereby trace the notions of feminity in Rwanda.