Women's Leadership
In this book extract, the New Zealand PM says too much focus on power and strength means leaders can lose sight of the need for kindness.
Tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Jacinda Ardern and I’m the prime minister of New Zealand. And I’m the third female prime minister, the second youngest, and the youngest female prime minister.
You were 17 when you joined the Labour party in New Zealand?
Yes, I joined a political party when I was a teenager and for me it wasn’t because I thought a life in politics was for me. Absolutely no! In fact, if anything, I thought it looked like a very hard life. It was because I was one of those young people that thought I’d like to change the world, even if it was in the smallest of ways, it just felt like I was doing something that would make a difference.
Click here to read the full interview by The Guardian.
Seema T Gala Vapi is a Municipal Councillor from India.
This interview was conducted in March 2019 in the margins of the sixty-third session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW63) in New York
We are not living up to our own commitments to promote women's rights, and we are also harming the prospects for sustainable, inclusive, economic growth that research shows are within reach if we succeed in creating a more gender-equal economy and society, says Mohammad Naciri.
Mohammad Naciri is the Regional Director of UN Women for Asia and the Pacific. Prior to joining UN Women, Mohammad was the Deputy Country Director of UNDP in Yemen, where he supported the country in the formulation of its Gender Strategy and the Gender Responsive Budgeting process. He has worked in Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Cambodia, dealing with issues from human trafficking to ethnic cleansing.
In an exclusive interview with People Matters, Mohammad Naciri talks about the need to create a level playing field for women to succeed at work. Here are the excerpts of the interview with Mohammad.
What are some patterns you’ve noticed over the years about women at work, and things they could be doing better to advance their careers?
Rather than focus on what women need to do better to advance their careers, it is important that we all take responsibility for building labor markets and workplaces that allow all staff members, men and women, to thrive, learn, and ultimately be as productive as they can be. In some cases this means gender-specific actions and policies, such as maternity leave but it is also about addressing the unconscious bias of companies that result in, for instance, overrepresentation of one gender in certain job functions, or in inherently discriminatory criteria for promotion.
Click here to read the full interivew published by People Matters on 28 May 2020.
Iceland’s Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir says that humility and listening to the science have been the keys to leading her country through the coronavirus pandemic, and that she hopes the global outbreak will be an opportunity to revive global discussions on climate change.
“What we can learn from this is that it’s important to put your ego as a politician aside and learn from those humble scientists, who have been faced with a crisis nobody could expect,” Jakobsdóttir told journalist Katie Couric during a TIME 100 Talks discussion on Thursday.
According to Johns Hopkins University’s global coronavirus tracker, Iceland has 1,803 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 10 confirmed deaths, ranking it among the lowest in Europe. Jakobsdóttir is one of several female leaders across the world who have been praised for their management of the coronavirus, alongside Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-Wen, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “I don’t think it is a coincidence,” said Jakobsdóttir, adding that several male leaders have also been managing their response to the crisis efficiently. “Being ready to admit that we are all are learning by doing, and probably will make mistakes. That has been the biggest issue of leadership, and maybe that comes easier to women than men.”
Click here to read the full article published by Time on 21 May 2020.
By Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj,
The world is facing a shared threat through Covid-19 but our experiences are hugely different, partly due to how our governments think and react. No matter how strongly we value our personal freedoms or how disconnected we feel from our politicians, the impact of their decisions has ramifications on how their citizens are exposed to Covid-19.
What is particularly pertinent in this experience is the lack of a blueprint: none of us has experienced anything like this before and so politicians have to draw on their core strengths of leadership to make these decisions. What is more interesting is the process leaders use to make decisions which have very different outcomes in the face of the same threat. Unlike war in its traditional sense there isn’t a need for a show of strength or an aggressive approach to conquering the enemy. The race to understand how the virus grows and mutates, and the rush to find medical preventative measures, demonstrates that this is unchartered territory and so the rule books are out of the window.
Click here to read the full article published by Forbes on 20 May 2020.
Nickocy Phillips is a Youth Ambassador from Trinidad and Tobago.
This interview was conducted in March 2019 in the margins of the sixty-third session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW63) in New York.
VVEngage is a Vital Voices signature fellowship supporting outstanding women political leaders making and influencing policy across the globe. Through this fully-funded fellowship, we aim to increase the capacity, decision-making power and effectiveness of women leaders in politics and government, shifting culture around women’s public leadership and moving towards equality in public representation globally. We also aim to work towards a more inclusive and equitable world by advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through policy.
Through this fellowship, Vital Voices advances women’s political leadership and the SDGs by conducting online and in-person* trainings with experts such as women leaders from the Vital Voices Global Network and professors from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. The fellowship also connects participants to a global network of peers and mentors, such as current and former female heads of state with the Council of Women World Leaders, with whom they can brainstorm and share challenges and best practices.
Click here to learn more and to access application details.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has developed a 10-Point Action Agenda for Advancing Gender Equality in Crisis Settings (10PAA), a roadmap to guide its development programming towards results that will help transform and advance gender equality in crisis contexts and achieve the Women, Peace and Security agenda. The 10PAA is central to UNDP’s new Crisis Offer, as well as its new Gender Equality Strategy 2022-2025. It represents a strong corporate commitment to addressing the most stubborn roots of gender inequalities.
The 10PAA is the result of a broad consultation process that aimed at finding entry points to strengthen gender-transformational results and women’s leadership and participation in crisis contexts. It is grounded in the understanding that deep-rooted, intersectional discrimination sits at the heart of the multiple challenges humanity faces and reinforces models of dominance that exclude and leave women behind, especially in crisis settings.
Click here to access the publication.
Online violence against women in politics (OVAW-P) poses a deepening challenge to democracy, serving as a key tool of illiberalism and democratic backsliding across the globe. OVAW-P encompasses all forms of aggression, coercion, and intimidation seeking to exclude women from politics simply because they are women. This online behavior seeks to achieve political outcomes: targeting individual women to harm them or drive them out of public life, while also sending a message that women in general should not be involved in politics. This online violence has a chilling effect on the political ambitions and engagement of women and girls, decreasing their presence and agency in politics and public life. Stopping gender-based attacks online is a solvable problem, and it is the fastest and clearest investment toward building an internet that enables everyone to be politically engaged.
This report includes a list of interventions that technology platforms, governments, civil society organizations, and the media can take to make meaningful progress towards ending online violence against women in politics.
Click here to access the report.
The Women in Government Fellowship is a six-month program that is focused on capacity-building, training, and mentorship of women in politics. It seeks to enhance and improve the quality of political participation of women.
The fellows will undergo in-person workshops, intensive virtual learning sessions, and hands-on mentorship by seasoned women politicians. This three-pronged approach will provide an academic grounding of democratic frameworks and policy-making, up-skill them with practical know-hows of electioneering, build the fellows' personal brands through personalised Public Narrative trainings by coaches from Harvard Kennedy School, and learn the ropes of politicking directly from a mentor who is undergoing the realities and tackling the challenges of being a woman in public office.
Application deadline: 30th November 2022
Shortlisted applicants' interviews: 5-15th December 2022
Selected Fellows list: 21st December 2022
Click here to learn more.
A compendium of ideas to reach gender parity in municipal politics
How can we begin to overcome the countless obstacles that are preventing women from fully participating in municipal politics?
The suggestions in this Inventory were compiled following consultations we carried out across Canada, as part of FCM’s Toward Parity Project.
These actions are not official FCM recommendations. They are potential strategies that need to be assessed to determine whether they can be adapted to fit local realities and opportunities.
Click here to access the guide.
To inform our own programming on advancing gender-balanced appointments and to establish a scalable, replicable, transformative model for advancing gender-balanced appointments, RepresentWomen gathered learnings from five similar initiatives around the country.
The following summary reviews these conversations:
- Key ingredients for success
- Stumbling blocks
- What they wish they knew
- Common tactics
Click here to access the guide.
For its inaugural Solutions Summit, RepresentWomen gathered experts in election administration, voting rights, and democracy reform to discuss the viable, scalable, and transformative initiatives that will strengthen our democracy. Over the course of three days, they held sessions on fair elections, fair access, and fair representation, ending each day with ways we could take actions to advance the solutions discussed that day.
They compiled all of those ideas, resources, and guides into one place to create this 2022 Solutions Summit Resource Guide, which provides a plethora of take-action options so you can be a part of the solution.
Click here to download the guide.
The internet is a tool that can simplify and encourage democratic engagement, but the rise of online disinformation challenges even the world’s most robust democracies. While the most recognizable disinformation campaigns are related to national politics, disinformers frequently employ narratives targeting women’s gender and sexuality in order to disrupt democracy. This is often then amplified by media agents and the general population, who may not have the intent to drive disinformation nor the capacity to discern it. NDI’s robust research in this field concludes that gendered disinformation is the use of false information to confuse or mislead by manipulating gender as a social cleavage to attack women and/or to sway political outcomes. It has three primary goals: to keep women out of politics; to change the views of women and men about women’s political participation; and specifically to change party policies or political outcomes. In short, it aims to undermine women’s free and equal participation in politics to the detriment of inclusive, resilient democracy.
Based on research conclusions, this paper outlines recommendations for NDI, its partners and those working globally to mitigate the democratic harms of disinformation, to ensure women’s safe participation and leadership in politics, and to monitor the social media and information environment in elections.
Click here to access the guide.
This guide is designed to increase the understanding of the legal obligations of countries in the West and Central Africa (WCA) region to achieve gender equality in decision-making. It focuses on strengthening efforts to improve the legal framework in the region to ensure that laws are clearly drafted, implementable and effective. Special focus is devoted to the processes by which laws supporting political participation of women are developed, negotiated, drafted, passed and implemented. It aims to strengthen law-making processes that build and secure the legal rights of women who want to run for elections and who are ready to take over leadership positions in their parliaments and governments. Legal instruments are presented that can be used to advance the political participation of women.
The comparative experiences presented in this guide address both examples of good practices and laws that have failed because their regulations are imprecise, unclear and/or lack effective sanctions. The guide presents also various provisions of laws resulting from different constitutional requirements or electoral systems, assessing their advantages and disadvantages.
Click here to download the guide published by UN Women in 2021.
This Handbook has been developed as publication by register of Political Parties with support from the Papua New Guinea Election Commission and the United Nations Development Programme in Papua New Guinea. This is part of UN Women Make the Change programme funded by the Australian Government’s Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development Programme.
Click here to download the report.