Are Rwanda’s dads ready for paternity leave?

Compared to elsewhere in Africa, Rwanda has relatively generous maternity benefits.

Women who are formally employed are entitled to full pay for 12 weeks after giving birth and if they have delivery complications, they can take an additional month off.

Now a coalition of civil society organizations is pushing to extend paid parental leave to Rwanda’s men, who currently only get four days off after the birth of a child.

The Rwanda Civil Society Platform is calling for a minimum of six weeks paid paternity leave, saying that it’s necessary to help narrow the gender gap in Rwanda, where women earn around half of what men do.

‘Kids need both parents’

The Rwandan feminist organization Spectra supports the call.

“Child care is not only breast feeding or healing needed by the person that has given birth,” said Spectra founder Chantal Umuhoza.

“The objective is not necessarily the new mother alone but making sure that the baby is well looked after, and using other forms of care that the father can provide,” she told DW.

Jimford Murenzi is one Rwandan father who would take paternity leave if it were available.

“Children, at whatever age they are, need both their parents,” he told DW, explaining that after the birth of his son, he and his wife alternated looking after him.

“Four days with me and four days with her because leaving it all to her would have been very unfair,” Murenzi told DW.

‘Doing it alone’

But others in Rwanda aren’t so convinced.

Rahma Ingabire became a mother three months ago. She says that her husband of 12 years has taken a hands-off approach to fatherhood even though he has the time to help.

“I gave birth to our child but the only thing that my man did was bring things, like diapers and food,” she told DW.

“But I would wash clothes, clean the house, change the baby’s diaper and spend all those sleepless nights doing it alone when he was there,” she said, adding that she doesn’t believe her husband would do more just because he had paternity leave.

Traditional roles

Rwanda has as many girls enrolled in primary and secondary education as boys and a parliament which boasts the highest rate of females in the world. It also ranks seventh in the world for closing its gender gap, not far behind countries famous for their gender equality, such as Iceland, Finland and Norway.

But Rwanda falls back on traditional gender roles when it comes to childcare and housework.

Women in rural regions, for example, spend up to 7 hours a day on unpaid care work while men do around 1-3 hours a day, according to a 2019 study by Action Aid Rwanda.

A earlier survey by the Rwanda Men’s Resource Center found that 45% of men thought tasks such as changing diapers and giving kids baths were a mother’s responsibility and 70% agreed with the statement that a women’s most important role was taking care of her home.

Changing mindsets

“We need a policy where men can also be involved in unpaid care work. There is still a mindset problem and we need to change that,” the founder of Rwanda Men’s Resource Center, Fidele Rutayisire, told DW.

Asked if it supported the idea of longer paternity leave, Rwanda’s Ministry for Gender and Family Promotion said it wanted to work on changing men’s mindsets around domestic duties first.

“We need men on board,” Assumpta Ingabire, the Gender Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, told Rwanda’s New Times newspaper last month.

“When men fully embrace the idea of sharing domestic unpaid care work, we can go back to the drawing board. It [paid paternity leave] is not impossible but we have to first change their attitude towards this work,” she said.