Marriage and Reconciliation After the Rwandan Genocide

The 1994 Rwandan genocide had a deep impact on many social institutions, including that of marriage. The gendered mortality effects of conflict resulted in a demographic situation in which there were more women than men, more wives than husbands, in Rwanda immediately following the genocide. These women found ways to maintain families and households in the absence of their husbands. My project is drawn on ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted in 201 4 with a rural women\u27s collective in Rwanda. The women\u27s collective comprises women survivors and wives of perpetrators who came together to form one of the first reconciliation initiatives. Over the course of six months, I conducted twenty-eight interviews with women in the collective, their grown children and various government and non-government officials whose work surrounds women and reconciliation. My project explores: How was the institution of marriage transformed through genocide? And how does the women\u27s collective supplant some of what is provided to women through marriage? I argue that the women\u27s collective re-enforces a narrative of genocide that involves the disappearance of husbands and the reworking of the institution of marriage, and the induction of women into reconciliation efforts. As women work together in the collective, they maintain the stability and status afforded to married women. I posit that the narratives women tell about marriage through genocide are forms of free expression through which women shape their past and current lives in post-genocide Rwanda. This project contributes to a growing body of research on women in post-conflict settings