Women's Leadership

The second season of the reality TV show, Ms President, was launched yesterday. The show seeks to portray to a national audience the capacity and ability of women to lead effectively.

The series showcases intelligent and articulate women who are “presidential” with the aim of increasing the chances of women in Kenya taking up leadership positions.

On July 31, 2021, the Moroccan Parliament adopted a reform that did not receive much attention but did represent a big step forward in helping close the country's gender gap. It involved a new amended law on public limited companies to promote balanced representation of women and men in corporate governance bodies (law 19.20 modifying and completing law 17-95 related to public limited companies). It set mandatory quotas for women on the boards of publicly traded companies, with a target of (at least) 30% female representation by 2024, and 40% by 2027.

UNITAMS made further concrete steps to broaden the scope of consultations process launched earlier this month, with emphasis on engaging groups in all states of Sudan. SRSG Volker Perthes led a full day of consultations sessions, on Monday, with several Darfur-based groups including Darfur Resistance Committees, Darfur Women’s Groups, Darfur IDP representatives and Mr. Gibril Ibrahim, head of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

Armed men have arrested prominent Sudanese women’s rights campaigner Amira Osman in a night-time raid on her home in Sudan’s capital Khartoum, her sister said. Osman’s arrest comes amid, what activists say, a campaign of arrests of civil society and pro-democracy figures since a military takeover in October.

The United Nations mission in Sudan said on Twitter it was outraged by Osman’s arrest, citing a “pattern of violence against women’s rights activists” that risked reducing their participation in politics.

Only two of the government briefings held at the height of the coronavirus pandemic were led by a female politician, and in both cases it was the home secretary, Priti Patel, a report into gender representation across the UK’s top jobs has shows.

The 2022 Sex and Power Index, compiled by the Fawcett Society, a charity campaigning for women’s rights, showed equality is still “decades off”, as men continue to dominate the top ranks of law, politics and business.