UN Women’s Mlambo-Ngcuka and the WHO’s Balkhy address members of FAO Women’s Committee, championing gender equality in education and career opportunities

20 July 2020, Rome - FAO Women’s Committee guest Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told a well-attended VirtualiTea Zoom session about her experience in South Africa, where under Apartheid, black women were doubly oppressed on account of both their race and their gender.

The Executive Director of UN Women also noted that despite a quarter-century of progress since the Beijing Women’s Conference of 1995, women were still being squeezed into a quarter of the global political space – barely 25 percent of legislators, even less in science or other traditionally male-dominated fields. In this regard she gave a strong defence of women’s quotas and mutual mentoring to ensure swift progress towards gender equality.

For her part, Hanan H. Balkhy, raised the challenge posed by conservative cultures such as her own Saudi one. In a nod to the role of male allies, she paid tribute to her father who, cherishing girls’ education, had moved the family to the U.S., at a time when few of Balkhy’s female compatriots went to school.

Now Assistant Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) in charge of antimicrobial resistance, Balkhy experienced the full weight of cultural resistance as she returned home to practice paediatrics. “I went out to do my rounds, flanked by two resident doctors. They were my juniors. But they were men. The families of the patients spontaneously addressed them rather than me,” Balkhy recalled. “You need the confidence not to be intimidated. Focus on your education and your career. Lead by example. It is the best way to empower yourself.”

FAO Director-General QU Dongyu concurred that legal arrangements, culture and family can evoke positive change.  He commended the role of visionary families in encouraging girls’ education.

Closer to home, Qu restated his commitment to consider gender when filling senior positions at FAO. “Without women’s contribution,” he said, “FAO would not be a harmonious organization. It is based on mutual learning, between men and women as groups, and between individuals.”

Audience members pointed to female success stories within FAO’s ranks, while also debating the challenge, raised by one male participant, of reconciling family life and career development. On a more global note, the French Ambassador to the Rome-based UN agencies, Delphine Borione, spoke passionately about the lack of birth certificates and identity papers for many girls in poorer countries, which prevents them from accessing rights they theoretically enjoy. “To have rights,” Ambassador Borione stressed, “you must exist first.”

Wrapping up the proceedings, which incuded several male representatives, Maria Helena Semedo FAO Deputy-Director General and chair of the Women’s Committee offered a positive response to Mlambo-Ngcuka’s plea for FAO to join two Action coalitions involving women’s advancement – on climate change and economic justice. Both groups will be formalized next year at Generation Equality in Paris, an event postponed on account of the COVID-19 crisis.