Women are working on construction sites, in factories, driving cabs and have official roles in government. And the country’s parliament is the first in the world where women claim the majority.

This isn’t the U.S., but Rwanda – an East African country located on a continent long-dominated by the rule of men.

The Washington Post reports that women in Rwanda now hold a third of all cabinet positions, including foreign minister, education minister, Supreme Court chief and police commissioner general. The parliament last month became 56 percent women, including the speaker.

And it’s amazing what women can do once they’re in charge.

Rwanda has now gotten rid of archaic patriarchal laws that are still enforced in many African societies, such as those that prevent women from inheriting land. The legislature has passed bills aimed at ending domestic violence and child abuse, while it ponders purging the legal code of discriminatory laws – including some that require a woman to get her husband’s signature on a bank loan.

Women lobbied for the removal of a statue in the capital city of Kigali that depicted a woman holding a jug of water on her head and a baby on her hip. Its replacement was one of a smiling woman free of the jug, holding the hand of a little boy walking alongside her.

"The fact that we are so many has made it possible for men to listen to our views," lawmaker Espérance Mwiza told the Post. "Now that we’re a majority, we can do even more."

Since the 1994 genocide, in which more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 100 days of violence that included the systematic rape of Tutsi women, President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, has enforced a kind of social engineering.

Since many of men were killed off in the genocide, Kagame’s new government adopted policies to help women, including a new 2003 constitution requiring that at least 30 percent of all parliamentary and cabinet seats go to women. The rest were indirectly elected.

The situation in Rwanda is in stark contrast to that of women in neighboring countries.

In the eastern Congo for example, an epidemic of sexual violence has ravaged the country and law and order have almost completely broken down. In the run-up to Kenyan elections last year, several female candidates were beaten and threatened with sexual violence, while one was murdered.

"We made a decision that if Rwanda is going to survive, we have to have a change of heart as a society. Equality and reconciliation are the only options,” said Aloisea Inyumba, Kagame’s former gender and social affairs minister.