ABSTRACT
Over the last 15 years, Rwanda has emerged as a state devoted to gender equality as one of its key governance principles. It has been lauded and praised for the gains that it has achieved in supporting grassroots women’s organisations, granting women greater political, economic and social autonomy, and most remarkably, in having the greatest number of women in parliament in the world. With women holding 56 per cent of seats in the bicameral system between 2003 and 2013, and, as of the September 2013 elections, 64 per cent, Rwanda stands as an exception (Republic of Rwanda, 2013). However, women in Rwanda are still struggling for day to day equity, as gender based violence is pervasive, domestic labour still ‘women’s work’, divorce a social stigma, sexual harassment at work normalised and sexual assault perceived as the woman’s fault. In my research among the Rwandan diaspora in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Ontario, Canada, I found that Rwandan women, who have migrated, either from Rwanda, or from the neighbouring states where they had lived in exile, often gladly left behind the confines of a rapidly changing, yet still narrow, gender regime in Rwanda. They have built lives in Canada in the hopes of affording safety for themselves and their families, security and liberty from sexual surveillance. They anticipated that life as a migrant would not be easy, yet it would allow them greater freedom to determine the conditions of their lives. Despite improved economic security and civil liberties, they find themselves confronting a new Canadian gender regime. In Canada, Rwandan women are racialised and subjected to increased surveillance as their blackness renders them hyper-visible, even in a diverse city like Toronto. However, between two, often competing, gender regimes, these women have found ways to begin healing from trauma, build lives and homes, and forge a sense of belonging both in Canada and Rwanda.
