‘Women must continue to work, to change things’

“As soon as the glass ceiling has been damaged, it might probably by no means be put again collectively,” begins Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in her TED discuss. The Nobel laureate and former president of Liberia — the primary girl president of an African nation — says extra nations ought to enable ladies to lead them.

On her first day in workplace, Sirleaf says she was each excited and exhausted. “It had been a really lengthy climb, to the place I used to be. Girls had been those that suffered most in our civil battle, and girls had been those to resolve it. Our historical past data many ladies of energy and motion. A President of the United Nations Normal Meeting, a famend circuit court docket choose, a president of the College of Liberia — I knew that I had to kind a really robust workforce, with the capability to deal with the challenges of our nation. And I needed to put ladies in all prime positions. However I knew that was not attainable. And so, I settled for placing them in strategic positions,” she says in her speech.

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Sirleaf says that whereas no one is ideal, there may be “nothing extra predictable than a robust girl who desires to change issues”. “One who’s courageous to communicate out, who’s daring in motion. I’m okay with the criticism. I do know why I made the selections I made, and I’m proud of the outcomes. However that’s why extra ladies leaders are wanted. For there’ll all the time be those that will tear us down, who will tear us aside, as a result of they need the established order to stay.”

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“Whereas we must be very grateful, and applaud the progress we now have made, we all know that there’s rather more work to be executed… In too many locations, political events are primarily based on patronage, patriarchy, misogyny, that attempt to maintain ladies from their rightful locations, that shut them out from taking management positions… We must continue to work to change issues. We must give you the chance to make sure that these structural obstacles which have stored ladies from having the ability to have the fairness they rightfully deserve… And we must additionally work with males. Full gender fairness will guarantee a stronger financial system, a extra developed nation, a extra peaceable nation,” Sirleaf says in her highly effective speech.

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