Women's Leadership
MI6 will be led by a woman for the first time in the foreign intelligence service's 116-year history.
Blaise Metreweli, who joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1999, will become the 18th chief of the organisation and take over from Sir Richard Moore later this year.
She is currently responsible for technology and innovation at the service and said she was "proud and honoured" to have been asked to lead.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called the appointment "historic" at a time "when the work of our intelligence services has never been more vital".
MI6 is tasked with gathering intelligence overseas to improve the UK's security, with its core aims being to stop terrorism, disrupt the activities of hostile states and bolster cyber-security.
Its chief, commonly referred to as "C", is the only publicly named member of the service.
Ms Metreweli, 47, is currently Director General "Q" - head of the crucial technology and innovation division that aims to keep the identities of secret agents secret, and come up with new ways to evade adversaries like China's biometric surveillance.
"MI6 plays a vital role - with MI5 and GCHQ - in keeping the British people safe and promoting UK interests overseas," she said.
"I look forward to continuing that work alongside the brave officers and agents of MI6 and our many international partners."
Full article published by the BBC.
Image by BBC
Overview
In 2025, the global community is commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995). In this vein the sixty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women took place at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 10 to 21 March 2025. The main focus of the session was on the review and appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcomes of the 23rd special session of the General Assembly. The review assessed ongoing challenges hindering the realization of gender equality and women's empowerment and examined how these efforts contribute to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. At CSW69 countries adopted the Political Declaration recommitting to the global agenda of gender equality and empowerment. In addition, various side events organized by CSOs and partners addressed some of the most critical issues on gender inclusion,empowerment and representation.
In this vein iKNOW Politics held three webinars in Arabic (09/05/2025), English (29/04/2025) and Spanish (25/04/2025) on the topic of ‘From Words to Action – Reviewing the CSW69’. These webinars explored the following key questions stemming from the discussions and outcomes of CSW69.
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What were the salient themes discussed during the CSW69 that address some of the most pressing issues for Women in Politics?
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What are the salient features of the Political Declaration that has been adopted?
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Reflections/Impressions on the sessions by speakers of the webinar.
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There is a significant global backlash against democracy and gender equity. Do you think the perspectives/commitments you heard at CSW69 meet the challenges of our time?
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Strategically speaking, what were your key lessons learnt, and how can they be implemented in your context.
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What was missing in the discussions, what direction can future agendas of CSW take?
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What lies ahead for Women’s Political Participation based on the commitments at the CSW69?
Key Takeaways
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Declarations Must Lead to Action: High-level declarations alone are not enough. There must be concrete national and multilateral frameworks, budgets, and accountability mechanisms to drive real change that are cross-cutting to drive grass-root change. The difficult negotiation process at CSW69, particularly considering emerging anti-gender rhetoric and its impact on previously agreed language within the UN frameworks was also highlighted.
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Effective Youth Inclusion is Essential: For sustainable change, the lived experiences and voices of youth must take center stage at events like CSW. Moreover, the intergenerational aspect of the CSW must be expanded to ensure dialogue in all spaces is representative of experience and representation of different generations of stakeholders.
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Funding Challenges: The current wave of political regression concerning gender equality is creating unprecedented funding challenges for women’s rights CSOs and forcing many to rethink their future strategies and operational models.
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Realigning Power & Responsibility: The movement must shift from organization-driven mandates to people-centered responsibility. Activism should reflect the realities of those most impacted.
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Engaging Men and Boys: Fostering a supportive environment for women’s political participation demands a shift in cultural attitudes by engaging men and boys in discussions on gender equality, leadership, and respectful public discourse.
Click here to view the full Arabic session.
Click here to view the full English session.
Click here to view the full Spanish Session.
We are happy to share that Wanja Maina, participant of the Eastern Africa Young Women's Empowerment Academy organised in the framework of the WYDE Women's Leadership project, has been nominated among the 50 most influential women in Kenya in 2025 by Africapitol Ventures!
Wanja’s work in media, gender equality, disability rights, and community engagement is truly inspiring — and this recognition is a testament to her dedication to creating meaningful change.
It also shows how initiatives like the Young Women's Empowerment Academies can be a positive step in young women’s leadership journeys, supporting them to reflect and work on their development plans and elevate their voices and impact.
Wanja is committed and looks forward to work regionally and globally on issues of public finance, gender equality, disability rights and political participation of special interest groups.
Wanja Maina "Honoured to Be Named Among Kenya's 50 Most Influential Women 2025 🏆✨"
I was pleasantly surprised to receive information from Africapitol Ventures that I am among the 50 most influential women in Kenya for 2025.
This recognition has truly uplifted my spirits and fills me with gratitude. 🙏💖
I believe in a better Kenya, and I have extensively engaged on Kenyan media on issues affecting ordinary Kenyans, which gives me great joy.
Through my media work, I've been able to amplify the voices of everyday people and bring attention to the challenges they face.
Beyond media engagement, I have been involved in many activities that have improved the welfare of women and girls, including program designing, community engagements, and other gender equality projects in partnerships with different entities. 👩👧👦💪
This work has been incredibly fulfilling as I've seen firsthand how collaborative efforts can create meaningful change in communities.
This recognition has encouraged me to do my best, reminding me that "there is someone who is always watching." 👀 It motivates me to continue pushing forward, knowing that dedication and genuine commitment to improving lives doesn't go unnoticed.
Looking ahead, I would love to partner and work with all like-minded people in the coming days on areas of public finance, gender equality, feminisms, disability rights, political participation of special interest groups, and other critical issues affecting our society. 🤝⚖️.
I would also love to work regionally and globally on these important issues. 🌍
I believe that by working together, we can create the lasting change that Kenya needs. 💫
I'm excited to share this news and connect with others who share this vision for a better future. 🌟
"We should always be like a hummingbird. I may be insignificant, but I certainly don’t want to be like the animals watching the planet goes down the drain. I will be a hummingbird, I will do the best I can"- Wangari Maathai
Despite all the progress that has been made toward gender equality globally, many are still tempted to view armed conflict as primarily the domain of men. Women often prove decisive in such settings, including combat, non-combat roles, and leadership positions. Nonetheless, they are routinely sidelined in formal peace processes and post-conflict governance. This pattern reflects a moral and practical failure.
During armed conflicts, women become more vulnerable to genocide, trafficking, slavery, and sexual violence, with all the associated health risks and psychological trauma. This alone earns them the right to participate in peace processes. But women are not only passive victims of conflict, as we have seen in Ukraine. They make profound wartime contributions on the battlefield, as well as in civil society and as advocates for peace.
Full article published by Addis Fortune here.
Image by Addis Fortune
For decades, African politics has been a domain dominated by men, with women often relegated to the sidelines of decision-making. But a growing number of countries how now experienced female leadership, including Liberia, Malawi and most recently Namibia. With President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah becoming the country’s first female head of state and assembling a cabinet where women hold the majority of ministerial positions, Namibia has set a historic precedent. This moment signifies much more than symbolism; it signals a broader and hopeful shift in the continent’s political landscape, one that may pave the way for future gender equality in governance. Could Namibia be a harbinger of a wider trend across Africa? Let’s take a closer look at the evidence.
Namibia is not alone in challenging the traditional power structures that have long kept women out of high political office. In recent years, countries like Tanzania and Ethiopia have also seen women rise to top leadership roles. Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who took office in 2021 after the death of President John Magufuli, has already made significant strides in reshaping the country’s political and economic trajectory. However, it is important to note that she, like Malawi’s former President Joyce Banda, assumed office not through an electoral mandate but through constitutional succession. This pattern raises important questions about the actual commitment of ruling parties to gender equality when women are not fielded as primary candidates.
Full article by Democracy in Africa.
Image by Democracy in Africa
Ulaanbaatar, May 22, 2025 /MONTSAME/. The “We Women” Forum, jointly organized by the Secretariat of the State Great Khural, the United Nations, and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), opened on May 21, 2025, at the State Palace.
Speaker of the State Great Khural of Mongolia Amarbayasgalan Dashzegve delivered opening remarks, stating, “Last year, amendments were made to the Law on Parliamentary Elections, adopting a mixed electoral system and legislating that no less than 30 percent of the candidate list of political parties and 50 percent of candidates in constituencies must be women. As a result, of the 1,341 candidates in the 2024 Parliamentary Election, 38.7 percent, or 520 candidates, were women, a historic high, and 32 women were elected to the State Great Khural, bringing women’s representation in Parliament to 25.4 percent, also a record.”
Full article published by Montsame on 22 May 2025.
Image by Montsame
This article analyses how women governors, mayors, and local elected officials promoted public health and social protection in countries where men chief executives failed to take steps to contain the virus. We focus on adverse circumstances in six cases: Brazil, the United States, the Philippines, Japan, Mexico, and India. While individual women may not see their leadership in feminist terms, their pandemic response contrasted with men chief executives’ hypermasculine bravado and slapdash decision-making. Women leaders relied on science, co-ordinated community outreach, and attended to the needs of marginalised groups. Their stories reveal women’s resiliency, resourcefulness, and resolve at the local level.
Click here to access the article
Indians accept women as political leaders, but many favor traditional gender roles in family life.
More than half a century ago, India was one of the first countries in the world to elect a woman as prime minister, and the country currently has several highly influential women politicians, including Sonia Gandhi, the head of one of the major national parties. Today, most Indians say that “women and men make equally good political leaders,” and more than one-in-ten feel that women generally make better political leaders than men, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey of nearly 30,000 adults throughout India. Only a quarter of Indian adults take the position that men make better political leaders than women.
Click here to access the report.
Political gender equality is a central pillar of democracy, as all people, independently of gender, should have an equal say in political representation and decision-making. In practice, democracies are generally better at guaranteeing gender equality than most non-democratic regimes. According to International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy Indices, 41 per cent of democracies have high levels of gender equality, while this is the case in only two of the world’s authoritarian regimes (Belarus and Cuba). The democracies with low levels of gender equality are also exceptional (only four, all weak democracies - Iraq, Lebanon, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea). Low levels of gender equality are much more common in non-democracies – more than one third of them fall into this category.
Despite more than half the countries in the world being democracies of some form, levels of political gender equality have not kept pace with democratic progress. In 2022, only 26 per cent of legislators in the world are women, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. At the current rate, gender parity will not be achieved until 2062, according to International IDEA’s estimate. The proportion of women heads of state is even lower. In 2022, only 19 countries in the world have women in the highest office of executive power. Of these, all except four are democracies. Moreover, as global democratic progress is threatened by rising authoritarianism and democratic backsliding, fragile levels of gender equality, further weakened by the pandemic, are at risk of more setbacks, as gender is increasingly used as a weapon in such processes.
Click here to read the full article published by International IDEA on 7 March 2022.
The pantheon of autocratic leaders includes a great many sexists, from Napoléon Bonaparte, who decriminalized the murder of unfaithful wives, to Benito Mussolini, who claimed that women “never created anything.” And while the twentieth century saw improvements in women’s equality in most parts of the world, the twenty-first is demonstrating that misogyny and authoritarianism are not just common comorbidities but mutually reinforcing ills. Throughout the last century, women’s movements won the right to vote for women; expanded women’s access to reproductive health care, education, and economic opportunity; and began to enshrine gender equality in domestic and international law—victories that corresponded with unprecedented waves of democratization in the postwar period. Yet in recent years, authoritarian leaders have launched a simultaneous assault on women’s rights and democracy that threatens to roll back decades of progress on both fronts.
Click here to read the full article published by Foreign Affairs.
Fawcett's Sex and Power 2022 Index is a biennial report which charts the progress towards equal representation for women in top jobs across the UK. Yet again, the report reveals the pace of change is glacial in the majority of sectors and shows that women are outnumbered by men 2:1 in positions of power.
Women of colour are vastly under-represented at the highest levels of many sectors and alarmingly, they are missing altogether from senior roles such as Supreme Court Justices, Metro Mayors, Police and Crime Commissioners and FTSE 100 CEOs.
Click here to download the report.
Very little research has considered how media discrimination could impact men and women’s political ambition. Yet, media discrimination could impact both beliefs about gender roles and political competence, and beliefs about voter bias, both of which could decrease women’s political ambition and increase men’s. Alternatively, media discrimination could lead women to react against discrimination and be motivated politically. This study tests how political ambition of men and women is impacted by media discrimination in a campaign and election lab experiment. Media discrimination in this experiment under-reports on women and uses traditional, stereotypical depictions of men and women. The results suggest that in certain conditions, media discrimination in political news may lead to a reactance or positive challenge effect for women, increasing their political ambition. Men, instead, may feel an aversion to entering politics, lowering their political ambition.
Click here to read the full article published by Sage Journals on 22 October 2022.