On March 8, people across the world celebrated International Women’s Day and, in particular, this year’s Balance for Better campaign theme, which focuses on creating a more gender-balanced world. But, as we all know, gender balance isn’t just a once-a-year issue - it’s something we need to be addressing every day.
As it’s still Women’s History Month, it only seems fitting to turn our attention to some of the women that are fighting for gender equality right now - the women that are the history makers of the future.
Here, I celebrate and highlight some of the women who are instrumental to global gender equality activism and who are some of the key activists fighting for gender policy reform in NGOs.
Malala Yousafzai
Malala needs little introduction - an activist who was shot in the head after publicly campaigning for Pakistani girls’ rights to go to school, Malala now runs the Malala Fund, which works to ensure that every girl is given the opportunity to go to school and make her own decisions about the future. Key policies include putting pressure on governments in developing countries to dedicate 20% and on donor countries to commit 15% of funding to education. Malala also meets with policymakers, Education Cannot Wait UN Ambassadors and grassroots activists. The youngest Nobel laureate, she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 when she was just 17 years old.
Find out more about Malala's work here.
Michelle Bachelet
As the first female President of Chile and the President of the UN’s Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, Michelle has campaigned for women’s rights consistently throughout her whole career. During her leadership term, she pioneered several political reforms changes, including forming a Ministry for Women and Gender Equality and pushing through new abortion legislation that ended Chile’s previous total abortion ban. In August 2018, she took up the position of High Commissioner for Human Rights at the UN and continues to be the “voice for the voiceless.”
Find out more about Michelle's work here.
Katja Iversen
As the President and CEO of Women Deliver - a leading global advocate for the health, rights and equality of girls and women - Katja and her team work for gender policy reform and campaign for governmental and business investment in women and girls across the world. Some of her key areas of interest are improving contraceptive, maternal and newborn health, protecting sexual rights, reducing gender-based violence and improving education opportunities.
Find out more about Katja’s work here.
Melinda Gates
As the Co-Founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the key areas that Melinda focuses on in her work is empowering women and girls living in underprivileged conditions to access the opportunities and services they need to thrive. She is also an advocate of accessible contraception and was one of the key leaders behind the London Summit on Family Planning, which aims to give a further 120M women across developing countries access to contraception by 2020. The Foundation’s gender equality strategy focuses on empowering women economically. Melinda now turns her attention to empowering women in tech and is determined that the next Bill Gates “won’t look like the last one.”.
Find out more about Melinda’s work here.
Musimbi Kanyoro
Musimbi has continued to work relentlessly for her vision - that every woman and girl is given equal rights and opportunity. She was the first non-white woman to ever be appointed CEO of the World Young Women’s Christian Association, where she spearheaded young women’s leadership, created a trustees board made up of 55% women and campaigned for HIV prevention and treatment. As the CEO and President of the Global Fund for Women, Musimbi now oversees the organisation’s fight for gender equality around the world and has helped it exceed $100M in grantmaking for women’s equality and empowerment initiatives globally.
Find out more about Musimbi’s work here.
