Gender Machinery and the Politics of Inclusion in Neoliberal Authoritarian Rwanda

In post-genocide Rwanda, the RPF regime has been internationally praised for its institutional commitment to gender equality, notably through the establishment of gender machinery and the constitutional adoption of gender quotas. However, this paper argues that such reforms must be critically situated within the framework of neoliberal authoritarianism—a mode of governance that merges technocratic development with centralized political control. Rwanda’s gender institutions, shaped by global donor expectations and Western gender norms, serve not only to promote women’s rights but also to consolidate regime legitimacy and attract international investment. While these institutions offer formal avenues for women’s political participation, they do so selectively. Elite, urban, and educated women are positioned to benefit from state-sponsored inclusion, while lower-class women remain structurally excluded from meaningful political engagement. This stratification reveals the limits of neoliberal gender reforms, which prioritize representation and institutional visibility over redistributive justice or grassroots empowerment. Gender machinery, in this context, functions as a tool of state-managed feminism—advancing gender equality in form, while reproducing classed and authoritarian hierarchies in substance. Drawing on fieldwork in Kigali and critical feminist scholarship, this paper interrogates the political logic behind Rwanda’s gender architecture. It asks: who is empowered by these reforms, and to what end? By examining the intersection of gender, class, and authoritarian governance, the paper contributes to broader debates on the instrumentalisation of feminist agendas within neoliberal state-building projects.