Wide Angle Meets the Women Who Are Rebuilding Rwanda in Ladies First, Premiering on PBS Thursday, July 22 at 9 P.M.

NEW YORK -- Thirteen/WNET New York's Award-Winning Series Of In-Depth Documentaries From Around The World Airs Thursdays At 9 P.M. On PBS Through October 7

The tiny African nation of Rwanda is making headlines. As Afghanistan and Iraq grapple with the role of women in the rebuilding effort, Rwandan women are already playing a remarkable role in politics -- holding 48% of the seats in the National Assembly of Rwanda, considered the greatest percentage of female involvement in a parliament anywhere in the world. Rwandan women are also taking prominent positions in business, agriculture and the promotion of equal rights.

Profiling women on the forefront of change, Ladies First reveals the challenges facing them and their country as Rwanda struggles to build a sustainable peace between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis 10 years after the bloody genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 people in just 100 days,

Ladies First, premiering Thursday, July 22 at 9 p.m., introduces viewers to some of Rwanda's extraordinary women, including:

Florence Kamili Kayiraba was among the nearly 800,000 Rwandan exiles who poured back into the country immediately following the genocide, and in 2001 she became one of the first five women to be elected mayor in the country. In her role as mayor, she was approached by many of her female constituents who sought her help with their problems, and she discovered that many women did not know that new laws granted them equal access to marital property. So Mayor Kayiraba instituted a weekly public marriage day to teach women about their rights and to help couples that want to wed but cannot afford the fees for a marriage license. The idea was an instant sensation -- with more than 300 couples turning up for the first ceremony alone -- and now the initiative has been adopted by other districts around the country.

Epiphanie Mukashyaka is one of a growing cadre of successful Rwandan female entrepreneurs. After losing her husband and one of their children in the genocide, she rebuilt her family coffee business and is now one of the largest employers in the southern region, employing more than 100 people from both of Rwanda's main ethnic groups -- Hutu and Tutsi. Her success is all the more astonishing because until 1992, Rwandan women were denied the right to engage in any commerce without their husband's permission. Her coffee has recently been rated 90 out of a possible 100 by Coffee Review and is now sold by U.S. retailers.

Juliana Kantengwa was elected to the national Chamber of Deputies in September 2003, in Rwanda's first ever democratically contested national elections. While 24 of those seats were automatically reserved for women by a new constitutional provision requiring a minimum of 30% female representation in government, women swept the election, capturing a surprising 39 seats. Women now hold 48% of the seats in the lower house of Rwanda's National Parliament, considered the greatest percentage of female involvement in a parliament anywhere in the world. As a political appointee to the parliament in 1999, Kantengwa helped revise the constitution, approved in 2003, which included dramatic new mandates allowing women to participate in all levels of government and policy-making, and setting the 30% threshold for female representation.

After the film, series host Mishal Husain interviews Ambassador Swanee Hunt, founder and chair of Women Waging Peace, who puts the story into context, connecting the dots for American viewers. Hunt was the U.S. ambassador to Austria from 1993 to 1997. She currently is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, director of the Women and Public Policy program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Her book, This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace, will be published by Duke University Press in November 2004.

Review cassettes and interviews with the filmmakers are available. For additional information and photography, go to www.thirteen.org/pressroom or www.pbs.org/pressroom.