Speakers also addressed at the African Women Leaders Symposium, organized by UN Women and Oxfam and held from August 24 to 25.
While we still have a ways to go -- if nothing changes, the United Nations predicts we'll only reach gender parity by 2133 -- we were inspired and hopeful by the inclusive and intergenerational approach taken by these leaders. Read below and click through for more from the Capital Ethiopia Newspaper.
capitalethiopia.com - “Before others empower us we must empower ourselves; it is a shame if we do not believe in the leadership of women,” Kenya’s Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary, Amina Mohamed, said.
“Half of the world is made of women and the other half is born by women,” Mohamed teased. “There are today two women leaders in Europe and just one in our continent. We need a proportionate number of women leaders,” she challenged women leaders during the opening session of the African Women Leaders Symposium, held in Nairobi, Kenya from 24-25 August.
“We must first accept each other. We go through stages where we can’t even trust women in leadership,” she cautioned.“It is a shame that this continues to happen. We should all strive to be women of substance. We have to vote for women. Ask yourself, why should anybodyelse do for you what you are not committed to do for yourself?” she posed.
Amina Mohamed, a woman of many first, is the first woman to hold the foreign ministry docket in Kenya. She said, women must also make individual contribution to change the status quo if at all the continent is to achieve the required gender balance.