{"id":644,"date":"2014-10-29T13:00:05","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T12:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=644"},"modified":"2016-10-28T13:55:04","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T12:55:04","slug":"african-women-a-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2014\/10\/29\/african-women-a-paradox\/","title":{"rendered":"African women: a paradox"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week I met a group of great women business leaders\u00a0from West Africa. <strong>African women are a powerful driving force. At the same time, their social recognition is not always on a par with that force.<\/strong> I find this somewhat paradoxical.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_651\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-651\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/10\/20141027_122333.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-651\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/10\/20141027_122333-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"At IESE with a group of West African business leaders\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/10\/20141027_122333-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/10\/20141027_122333-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/10\/20141027_122333-624x468.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-651\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">At IESE with a group of West African business leaders<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>African women have an important role to play on every level:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>some women are <strong>at the frontier of the political scene<\/strong>: this is the case of <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ellen_Johnson_Sirleaf\">Ellen Johnson Sirl<\/a>, <\/strong>President of Liberia since 2006, for example. She&#8217;s the first elected female head of an African state, and was awarded the 2011 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nobel_Peace_Prize\">Nobel Peace Prize<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>other women are <strong>at the helm of important companies<\/strong>: some are the entrepreneurs that have created these organizations, like <a href=\"http:\/\/ibukunawosika.org\/\"><strong>Ibukun Awosika<\/strong><\/a>. A graduate from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iese.edu\/en\/\">IESE&#8217;s <\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iese.edu\/en\/global-executive-mba\/\">Global EMBA <\/a>program, Ibukun is the founder and chairperson of The Chair Centre, a market leader in the office furniture and banking security systems industries in Nigeria.<\/li>\n<li>most women are <strong>the ones holding their families together<\/strong>: I have seen women doing construction work in Nairobi. When I showed my surprise, it was explained to me that it&#8217;s not unusual for\u00a0a\u00a0man to turn to alcohol if he\u00a0 loses his job, and then women will do whatever it takes to bring up their children.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And yet, <strong>in many African countries women do not receive the recognition they are due<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>marriage brings women to a more respected status<\/strong> \u2013 they become someone&#8217;s wife and therefore gain the respect owed to him. When people find out a woman is unmarried, they might show disrespect for her. For instance, a female faculty member was teaching a class, and the students were treating her impolitely. At a certain point, she said: &#8220;I wonder what Mr. Her-last-name would think if he heard these things\u2026&#8221; and they immediately began to retract their comments.<\/li>\n<li><strong>when a woman becomes a widow, she loses her status, and may even lose her property<\/strong> to her in-laws depending on how greedy these are. One colleague explained to me that when one of her friends became a widow, she visited my colleague and asked her to keep the deeds to the house, as she was afraid the in-laws would come and claim them. While this may have to do with Africans&#8217; communal mentality and there are various ways in which to interpret it, it&#8217;s an indicator of the status of women.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>It&#8217;s about time that the recognition women receive is in line with their own dignity and with the great contributions they make to society.<\/strong> One way to help to bridge the gap is to <strong>share the wonderful stories about great women,<\/strong> as I have tried in to do in the first part of this post. Can you share any other great stories?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week I met a group of great women business leaders\u00a0from West Africa. African women are a powerful driving force. At the same time, their social recognition is not always on a par with that force. I find this somewhat paradoxical. African women have an important role to play on every level: some women are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[93551],"tags":[85375,79903,100488,1081,80201,100489],"class_list":["post-644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-women-in-africa","tag-african-women","tag-communal-mentality","tag-dignity","tag-nobel","tag-politics","tag-recognition","megacategoria-mc-africa","megacategoria-mc-women-in-business"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":653,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions\/653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}