The next time I go to Kigali, I hope to get a chance to sit in on a session of Parliament. Yeah, I know I sound like the typical Imperialist American, thinking she can saunter in off the streets and chill with the local political ruling class just because she's American.
It's just that I'd like to witness a governing body where there are more women than men in charge. Fifty six percent of Rwanda's Parliament members are women, to be exact. I think it's intriguing that it took something horrific like the genocide to make a country realize that you probably need to let more women run things. I know we can be real whack jobs at times, but we are infinitely less likely to hack each other to death than men.
Anyway, that's part of why I keep spending so much time on the African continent. As a woman journalist, I know what it's like to go up against the male establishment in American newsrooms. But my mind continues to be boggled at the challenges for young women who want to be reporters and editors in African countries. They put up with abuse, harassment, sexism and inequities in ways I can't begin to imagine.
So while I do what I do to help anybody who wants to improve their skills, I'm always rooting just a little bit more for the women. I always hope I'm giving them just a little bit of extra confidence and determination. I'd like to think that one day, some of them will be running their newsrooms, and then you'll see some REAL change.
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