By Dhabessa Wakjira*

There is a proverb in many African cultures: “When a woman stumbles, the whole household trembles.” But the corollary is rarely spoken: when a woman rises, the entire nation ascends with her.

For generations, the story of nation building has been told as a masculine epic—a tale of warriors, kings, negotiators, and generals. Yet the quiet truth, known in every village and every home, is that nations are not built by speeches alone. They are built by hands that grind grain, by backs that bend over rivers, by voices that sing children into sleep and then rise at dawn to plant the seeds of tomorrow.

This feature story turns the lens on the women of Oromia and Ethiopia—not as victims, not as symbols, but as architects. It is a reflection on what it means to say dubartootaafi ijaarsa biyyaa: women and the construction of a country.

The Invisible Foundation

Walk into any rural household in Oromia before the sun has touched the horizon. Who is awake? The woman. She has already fetched water, kindled the fire, and begun preparing the marqaa that will fuel the day’s labor. By the time the first light breaks, she has completed a morning’s work that would exhaust a city dweller by noon.

This is not a scene from the past. This is the present. And it is the foundation upon which the national economy rests—unpaid, unacknowledged, and utterly indispensable.

Yet when we speak of “nation building,” we speak of parliaments, budgets, roads, and treaties. We speak of the visible architecture of power. The invisible architecture—the reproductive labor, the agricultural toil, the social cohesion woven through kinship networks—is left to women, and left out of the story.

Beyond the Domestic Sphere

To say “dubartootaafi ijaarsa biyyaa” is to make a claim that challenges this erasure. It is to insist that women are not merely beneficiaries of development or recipients of aid. They are active agents in the creation of the nation.

Consider the Gadaa system, the indigenous Oromo democracy. For centuries, it has been understood primarily as a male institution—five parties, eight years each, a cycle of power passed between generations of men. But what of the Siinqee? The institution of the Siinqee staff, carried by Oromo women, was not a decoration. It was a check on power. When a woman raised the Siinqee, disputes stopped. When women marched together, decisions were delayed until justice could be heard. The Siinqee was not outside the Gadaa; it was the conscience of the Gadaa.

This is the deeper meaning of women and nation building. It is not about “including women” in structures designed by men. It is about recognizing that women have always possessed their own structures, their own forms of authority, their own ways of holding the nation together when men—with their armies and their ambitions—pulled it apart.

The War Women Fight

In times of conflict, women are called the “first victims.” They bear the weight of displacement, of sexual violence, of watching their children starve. But they are also the first responders, the first rebuilders, the first to gather the scattered pieces of a shattered community.

The women of Oromia know this intimately. They have buried sons who fell in the struggle. They have visited husbands in prisons built by regimes that feared their names. They have fled across borders with infants on their backs and nothing else in their hands. And then, when the shooting stopped—or even before it stopped—they began to rebuild.

They formed iddir (burial associations) to ensure that the dead were honored. They formed iqqub (rotating savings groups) to send children back to school. They turned refugee camps into marketplaces, turning nothing into something, turning survival into life.

This is nation building. This is ijaarsa biyyaa.

The Politics of Presence

In recent years, the political landscape of Oromia and Ethiopia has shifted. Women have taken seats in parliament, ministries, and regional councils. The language of gender equality has entered the constitution, the party platforms, and the international donor reports.

These are victories. They are not empty.

But presence is not power. A woman sitting in a chair designed by a patriarchal system, following rules written by that same system, speaking a language that was never her mother tongue—this is not liberation. It is a foot in the door. And a foot in the door, while necessary, is not the same as building a new house.

The true work of dubartootaafi ijaarsa biyyaa lies deeper. It lies in asking: What would a nation look like if it were built not on competition but on care? Not on extraction but on cultivation? Not on the logic of the battlefield but on the logic of the kitchen—where resources are shared, where no one eats until everyone is served, where waste is a sin and generosity is survival?

These are not soft questions. They are revolutionary ones. And they are questions that women, who have been excluded from the official story of nation building, are uniquely positioned to ask.

The Double Burden

No honest reflection on women and nation building can ignore the double burden. Women are expected to build the nation while also building the home. They are told to lead, but only after they have cooked, cleaned, raised the children, and cared for the elderly. They are praised for their strength while being denied the rest that strength requires.

This is not sustainable. A nation that demands everything from its women while giving them nothing—no shared domestic labor, no affordable childcare, no protection from violence, no recognition for unpaid work—is a nation that is eating its own seed corn.

Ijaarsa biyyaa requires the bricks of justice. And justice begins at home.

The Young Girl and the Future

Imagine a girl born today in a rural village of Oromia. If she is lucky, she will go to school. If she is very lucky, she will finish. If she is extraordinarily lucky, she will find work, marry by choice, and live without fear of violence.

But luck is not a policy. And nation building is not a lottery.

The question before the Oromo people—before all Ethiopians—is whether they will continue to build their nation on the backs of women, or whether they will finally build with them, for them, through them.

The girl in that village has her hand on the future. She does not yet know the word “feminism.” She may never read a book about “gender and development.” But she knows what her mother knows: that the country will be what women make it. Because women have always made it. They have just never been given the credit.

Conclusion: The Unfinished House

Dubartootaafi ijaarsa biyyaa is not a slogan. It is a description of reality. Women have been building this nation since the first seed was planted, since the first child was named, since the first council gathered under the sycamore tree.

The house is not yet finished. The roof leaks. The walls have cracks. Some rooms are still locked to those who built them.

But the builders are still here. They are waking before dawn. They are fetching water. They are raising the Siinqee. They are sitting in parliament and sleeping in refugee camps. They are doing two jobs, three jobs, the work of generations compressed into a single day.

The question is not whether women can build a nation. They already have.

The question is whether the nation will finally acknowledge their hands—and let them help design the blueprints.

When a woman rises, the entire nation ascends with her. Let her rise. Let the nation rise.

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*Note on Attribution: The feature story is based on the author, Lediya K Jarso, the book reflection. Dhabessa Wakjira engaged with that reflection as a commentator, and the present reflection draws substantially from the ideas, themes, and framing originally articulated by the author. This feature story is offered as a synthesis and expansion of that shared conversation, with full acknowledgment of the original source.