Source: The Africa Report
The number of seats held by women in various parliaments around Africa is inching upwards. A few weeks after she was sworn in as Malawi's first female president, Joyce Banda travelled to Liberia in late April 2012 to meet President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who has occupied Liberia's highest office since January 2006. Glowing in African attire, both leaders bantered like sisters during a press conference.
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation Improving access to education, healthcare and jobs for women in the arid Sahel region of Africa could play an important part in rolling back poverty in one of the world's most underdeveloped areas, the U.N. special envoy to the region said.
Source: UN Women Over 900 government representatives of UN Member States, experts, academics, and members of international, civil society and private sector organizations from more than 100 countries gathered in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, from 9-10 June to review the Implementation of the International Decade for Action "Water For Life" (2005-2015), a global initiative for international cooperation in water management launched by the Government of Tajikistan 10 years ago.
Source: Shanghai Daily
The chief of the United Nations women's agency on Sunday said the agency is partnering China to raise the gender-sensitiveness of infrastructure investors in regions where women's welfare lack sufficient protection.
The Global Alliance of Mayors and Leaders from Africa and the Diaspora, have called on governments to increase their investment in women’s education to encourage their participation in decision making processes at the grassroots level.
The 25th African Union Summit is expected to take decisions that will take issues of gender equality and women's empowerment to new heights, says Minister in the Presidency responsible for Women, Susan Shabangu.
Source: Sierra Leone Times
Despite considerable advances made in the global response to the AIDS epidemic over the last several decades, young women and adolescent girls in Africa "are still being left behind," according to a new joint report from the United Nations and the African Union.
For many years women have feared to contest in elections. That comes due to various reasons which hinder back their courage.
A campaign aimed at refocusing the developmental agenda so that women and girls take centre stage was launched at the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa in Cape Town on Thursday.
During the early days of the revolution against President Hosni Mubarak, a sense of shared purpose and community made Tahrir Square feel like the safest place in Cairo, for women and men. But that collapsed almost the moment Mr. Mubarak left office, on Feb. 11, 2011. Sexual assault and the harassment of women in public, an epidemic problem in Egypt for decades, became alarmingly common again.
While African women have made considerable gains in the political, economic and social development of the continent, some say they are still widely marginalized within government.
The exclusion of Africa’s women from its boardrooms starts right from school, and reversing this would require radically changing society, the World Economic Forum on Africa heard Thursday.
Choosing between ‘Libya Dawn’ and ‘Libya Dignity’ could lead to losing your life in Libya today, explained leading woman activist Alaa Murabit during her talk at the recent Oslo Freedom Forum.
It’s still a man’s world in African science. The marginalisation of women in science is not unique, though, to the continent. It is a pattern around the globe. It has been estimated that, on average, only 30% of science roles throughout the world are held by women.
Source: All Africa
Africa may stack up pretty well compared with the world's regions on having companies with female board members, but the continent has a distance to go to make sure its strong economic growth includes its most talented women at the top, according to the first-ever study of female board membership in Africa, unveiled during the World Economic Forum Africa, by the African Development Bank, commissioner of the study.
Source: Business Report
A campaign aimed at refocusing the developmental agenda so that women and girls take centre stage was launched at the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa in Cape Town on Thursday.
Source:The Herald
Africa and the world seem to have learnt from the mistakes of the MDGs, if the approach to the SDGs is an indicator.
Source: All Africa
Women economic empowerment cannot be delayed anymore with women having an important role to play in the development of economies, says Public Enterprises Minister (DPE) Lynne Brown.
Source:The Herald
Sadc Gender and Women Affairs ministers have called for increased funding for gender programmes at both national and regional level to create equal opportunities for women and men.
Source: UN NEWS CENTRE
More open and constructive dialogues should be held among Sudanese stakeholders as a top priority to address 'the silence and the denials' of crimes against women, a United Nations human rights expert concluded after her recent mission to the country.