Women Left Out of Key Global Lists

The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)

Mobhare Matinyi

12 May 2011

column

From March 10 to 12, Newsweek, and its sister publication, The Daily Beast, hosted the second unique event for women from around the globe, known as 2011 Women in the World Summit, in New York City. Just before the event, on March 8, which is the International Women’s Day, the two publications honoured inspirational women from around the globe, under the title, ‘150 Women Who Shake the World’.

The New York invitation-only gathering brought together 78 women and seven lucky men, including former US President Bill Clinton, who spoke at the summit. Not a single woman from Tanzania made it to either list, not even Dr Asha-Rose Migiro, the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The women’s summit had seven Africans, including three, who no longer hold the citizenship of any African country. The list of 150 influential women in the world, included 21 from Africa, who hold the citizenships of their respective countries. These are Botswana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, which had one each; Liberia, Somalia, South Africa, and Uganda, which had two each; Kenya, with three; and four from Egypt.

Ms Tina Brown, the editor-in-chief of Newsweek and The Daily Beast, co-hosted the summit with six other women. They included Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former Nigerian Finance minister, who now works as the World Bank’s managing director.

The seven women from Africa, who attended the summit, were two Somali medical professionals, Dr Hawa Abdi, who founded a hospital and a relief camp, and her American daughter, Dr Deqo Mohamed. Another Somali woman, Ms Ayaan Hirsi Ali, famous for escaping the horror of her country in 1992, and becoming a Member of Parliament in The Netherlands from 2003 to 2006, was also present.

From Kenya, a Maasai woman, Ms Rebecca Lolosoli, the founder of a safe haven for women and a training centre to promote human rights, was invited to the summit, and so was Ms Chouchou Namegabe, a journalist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), who dared to report about the rape crisis in her country.

Ms Eva Walusimbi from Uganda, an entrepreneur who sells solar lights and recruits other women to join the business, somehow got an invitation, and so did an American of Egyptian origin, Ms Dalia Ziada, a human rights activist in the US and Egypt.

The majority of the summit attendees made it to the 150-list, which had 62 women from the United States. These women were honoured for their great work in shaping the future for their fellow women. Thus, the list had to include heads of state and heads of households, angry protesters, business leaders, journalists, educationists, rural women – every kind of a woman you can think of, but somehow Tanzanian women were left out.

What is so astonishing is that not only is Tanzania respected as a champion of women’s rights, but also some of them have done better than those who made it to the summit and into the list of great women. So what went wrong?

Furthermore, Tanzanian women contribute immensely to the global and regional leadership, starting with the UN. The first Speaker of the Pan-African Parliament, for example, Ms Getrude Mongella, is a Tanzanian, and so is the executive secretary of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, Ms Liberata Mulamula.

One of the new faces in the current Cabinet, Prof Anna Tibaijuka, resigned from her position as the UN Under-Secretary and Executive Director of the UN-Habitat to run for Parliament just a few months ago. Despite being the first African woman to hold such a position, she, too, was forgotten, just like many others.

While a woman from Botswana, Ms Unity Dow, made it to the top 150 for being the first female High Court judge in 1998, Ms Anna Makinda didn’t make the cut for being the first female Speaker of the National Assembly. A Kenyan blogger and activist, Ms Ory Okolloh, made it, but Tanzania, with an army of female activists, missed a slot. Interestingly, Ms Phelicia Dell, from Haiti, a handbag designer, made both lists.

The list of Tanzanians goes on and on to include Ms Susan Mashibe, an entrepreneur, who recently won the honour of attending a month-long Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership Programme sponsored by the US State Department. How about Ms Vicky Mtetema, the journalist who won an international award for her BBC reports on the killings of albinos?

Anyway, how well known is the name of our country and the work of our people? How good are our leaders in promoting the country when they fly all over the world? Something is amiss somewhere.

Tanzania used to have a voice and was a leader on every major issue concerning Africa and the developing countries when Mwalimu Julius Nyerere was the President. We may dismiss the whole thing, but the question remains: What went wrong?

Mr Matinyi is a consultant based in Washington, DC

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