Rethinking the Millennial Rwandan Woman’s Struggle
Many millennial women find it challenging to get married, build a family, and have a successful career at the same time. Sixty-three percent of millennial women believe that having children will make it harder for them to advance their career, in part because women are paid less than men for doing the same job. For this reason, among others, some women decide not to get married.
In Rwanda, culturally, when someone gets married, it means they are ready to start and grow their own families. Therefore, the newlyweds are expected to have children right away. Most Rwandans will agree that parents, mostly mothers, will start calling you a few months into marriage to ask if you have conceived with questions like: Are you pregnant already? What is taking you so long? Have you checked with the doctor? Is it you or the husband who is not okay? When should we expect a grandson/granddaughter? and so on.
Many of my female friends claim that they want to wait to get married until their 40s, and some say they don’t ever want to get married. Images of their mothers doing everything at home flash back from their childhood. How can a woman balance a successful career with cleaning, washing dishes, taking care of children and a husband, cooking, and more? This domestic work is what a woman who is proper “wife material” has long been expected to do, so it’s what so many of our mothers did. They either gave up their careers completely or sacrificed an inhumane amount to balance the demands of work and home.
To this day, married women in Rwanda are not fully expected to have challenging careers or pursue serious degrees in large part because of the expectation that women will have children right after entering marriage. Many women who do balance both find that society still prioritizes their role as a wife and mother as more valuable. The question of whether women must choose between marriage and family or career development has become more urgent as Rwandan women become more educated, and thus are seeking higher job positions.
I am an outlier — I am a Rwandan woman who has chosen to believe that I can have both a robust career and a happy marriage, and so far it’s going well. Since getting married last November while completing my Global Health Corps fellowship, I have learned important lessons about balancing this tension and navigating social norms.
People started asking me why I was rushing when I decided to get married. “Waretse umwana w’abandi agasoza fellowship!” — “Please let her finish the fellowship first!” — they told my husband. We decided to get married anyway, and it was one the best days of my life so far. Many people disagreed with my decision, fearing that marriage would prevent me from finishing my transformative Global Health Corps fellowship program especially given my role with University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), a very ambitious and fast-growing organization.
Working with UGHE and being in a marriage have been rewarding and complementary experiences. I was lucky to join the university at this phase because I got to learn so much through my daily work with different people on the team. It’s also been been a challenging , with lots of time spent outside of my comfort zone. Getting married has not only key to my daily joy, but is also part of my motivation to wake up, go to UGHE, and do my work happily. Every time things have not gone according to my plans and expectations, my husband has been there to help me through. It is just like having a free mentor and career guide who’s always available to help me think through whatever I have in mind. And UGHE has been a supportive place to work for me as a married woman, allowing me to take a day off to care for my husband when I needed to and always making me feel valued.
To me, the key to being able to balance a successful career with marriage lies in re-examining gender norms at two levels:
- Marriages need to be more like partnerships, with burdens shared and decisions jointly made, for women to truly thrive. No one can say yes to every work, family, friend and personal commitment — we all need strong support systems. (We also need access to contraception so that we can plan to have children if and when we’re ready!)
- Companies and organizations need to take a hard look at their policies and norms. Are married women and mothers penalized, either formally or informally, for trying to balance work and home life? It’s time for a movement to eradicate this type of bias in our society.
Achieving and sustaining a work-life balance is an ongoing learning process. To all the young women out there wondering if it’s possible to pursue ambitious careers and make their marriages work, I urge you to seek partners who are willing to support you and continue to push for broader change in gender norms at the level of organizations and institutions. We may not be able to have it all, but we do have many more choices than we’ve been told.
Gisele Gihozo is a 2017–2018 Global Health Corps fellow at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda.
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