Tutsi Women Of The Rwanda - 1682 Words

In 1994 the country of Rwanda experienced genocide that killed thousands of people. This genocide was mostly against the Tutsi but also men, women and children of Hutu decent that were found to be in contact with Tutsi. The conflict between the Tutsi, Twa and Hutu people began when the Belgium colonizers decided to divide the three groups. According to Herndon and Randell (2013) â€Å"colonial ideology had promoted the notion of Tutsi women as more aesthetically pleasing because of imagined similarities to European features (p.73). Which is why during the genocide of 1994, Tutsi women were victims of sexual violence, were told by their perpetrators that they wanted to find out if Tutsi women were really different from Hutu women. A lot of women†¦show more content†¦As long as they were somehow associated with Tutsi men, they had to die because they did not want a Tutsi baby born from any of the women. Both men and women experienced the genocide but what women went through made women understand the meaning of discrimination. Herndon and Randell state that women †¦ â€Å"experienced fighting as soldiers, hiding from perpetrators, fleeing pogroms, rape as a war crime, sexual slavery, the killing of their children – all aspects of the genocide† (p.79). All women experienced this and it did not matter their ethnicity, social and economic class, sexual orientation and identity and or marital status. Even women that were menstruating, pregnant, breast feeding their babies, going through menopause, sick or caring for the sick and elderly were targeted as prey. Women were more likely to be kept as sexual slaves than men so a lot more survived the genocide than men. Before the genocide women participated in politics, but they could only do so if things they were supposed to do as mothers, wives or just as a female were not affected. Because a lot of the men were either dead or in prison, women and girls had to make decisions if they had to survive. Women and girls stepped in to become heads of the household and in order to do this they had to learn new skills. Tutsi and Hutu women were able to come together after the genocide of 1994 and support each other. As Herndon and Randell (2013) pointed out â€Å"great violence,