A woman was convicted of genocide and rape. Play Half the Sky again.

The aid and development world likes to deal in simple deterministic problems. Africans are starving (1985)? Feed the world. Communism has failed (1989)? Privatize the world. In recent years, a new mantra has become widely accepted: Your country is still poor? You’re probably sexist.

They believed that the traditions of developing countries that often marginalized and abused women were not only unfair but also unwise. They believed that women took their responsibilities as housewives more seriously than men, were more hardworking, more trustworthy, less violent, and less prone to alcoholism—and therefore they were the key to any country’s economic progress. This view is best expressed in the book Half the Sky: Turning oppression into opportunity for women around the world The book, Sex and the Nature of Gender, was published last year by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. There is plenty of evidence to support this view: despite the many matriarchal traditions in poorer parts of Asia and Africa, custom and religion in the Muslim world clearly hold back women in much of the developing world. The economic success of China’s communism, which long ago liberated women, and Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, which provides microloans primarily to women, prove that these attitudes are not only outdated but also foolish. So it’s only natural that the argument is being adopted at the highest levels in the West. This week in South Africa, first lady Michelle Obama made a point of meeting with young women, urging them in Soweto to become “the generation that brings opportunity and prosperity to forgotten corners of the world.”

The conviction on Friday of a woman, then a former government minister, for genocide and rape during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide may help reinforce the idea that all a poor country needs to achieve progress is to empower its women. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, sentenced Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 65, and her son to life in prison on 11 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, extermination, rape and persecution related to atrocities in Rwanda’s southern Butare region. The court allowed the rape charge against her on the grounds that Nyiramasuhuko, an ethnic Hutu who was family minister at the time, knew her subordinates were raping Tutsi women and did nothing to stop or punish them.

“It’s shocking that this mother and former social worker, trained to protect life, could be held responsible for such a horrific crime,” Freddy Mutanguha, Rwanda country director for the genocide prevention group Aegis Trust, told Reuters. But is it? Perhaps even more shocking is that a person’s gender is a major determinant of their behavior. Two years ago, I interviewed Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in her office in Monrovia, Liberia, and when I inevitably asked her about her experience becoming Africa’s first female president, she sighed: “Oh my god, another woman problem!” Johnson-Sirleaf did dutifully repeat some platitudes about how women make better leaders. But her tone made it clear that she felt these platitudes were — to use a phrase — disempowering, as if she were a nonentity whose achievements — which included saving a country from civil war — had little to do with her and were almost entirely due to her gender.

It is illogical to exclude women from the economy. It is naive to think that they hold the solution to poverty or poor leadership. To claim that their secret lies in their gender is, by definition, sexist. Development and progress, both economic and social, are extremely complex. Simple answers, as Nyiramasuhuko’s conviction should remind us, are simple-minded.