#ChooseToChallenge is one of the trending hashtags as countries and organisations prepare to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) on Monday, March 8. People are being asked to choose to challenge gender bias and inequality and to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements towards the creation of an inclusive world. It is sad that this is still an ask in 2021, but the obvious barriers to women taking their rightful and earned places in the world still need to be broken down.
A recent case in point involved the history-making appointment of Nigerian-American Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the first woman director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Born in Nigeria, Mrs Okonjo-Iweala was educated at Harvard and later earned a PhD at MIT. According to her bio, as published by the BBC, she is a former managing director at the World Bank, was finance minister of Nigeria twice and that country’s foreign minister once. She is a current board member of Twitter, Standard Chartered Bank and Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.
The foregoing establishes that the development economist is eminently qualified for the position she now holds. It is information that is also readily available to anyone who does even a rudimentary Google search. Yet, when the Biden administration overturned the Trump administration’s opposition to Mrs Okonjo-Iweala last month, declaring its “strong support” for her, patriarchy, racism and misogyny immediately came into play.
In what could only be described as attempts to diminish Mrs Okonjo-Iweala before she formally took the reins at the Geneva, Switzerland WTO headquarters, three Swiss newspapers – Luzerner Zeitung, Aargauer Zeitung and St Galler Tagblatt – described her in headlines as “this grandmother” and after being taken to task on social media, as “this 66-year-old Nigerian”. Incredulously, one of the newspapers went on to add in its story, “There are still doubts about the qualifications about the mother of four and grandmother.”
While Mrs Okonjo-Iweala is in fact a grandmother, is 66 years old and was born in Nigeria, none of those is the reason she was successful in her campaign to head the WTO. There is the fact that she spent 25 years at the World Bank and was a managing director who oversaw the bank’s operational portfolio in Africa, South Asia and Europe and Central Asia when she resigned in order to go and serve in Nigeria. There is the fact that she was ranked 48 of Forbes magazine’s world’s top 50 power women in 2015. According to Forbes, she was “credited with developing reform programmes that helped improve governmental transparency and stabilize the economy,” while she was Nigeria’s finance minister.
As was pointed out by several people who chose to challenge the Swiss newspapers description of Mrs Okonjo-Iweala, there is no doubt, that had the WTO post had gone to a 66-year-old white grandfather with the same qualifications, the headlines would have described him as a ‘Harvard-trained economist’, or ‘former World Bank managing director’.
When Mr Peter Sands was appointed executive director of the Global Fund in 2017, he was described in news reports as a British banker, which he was. He is also a father of four, but this was not featured in headlines about his new position. Similarly, when Mr David Malpass was selected as president of the World Bank Group in 2019, what was deemed important was that he was once US Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs. Mr Malpass also has four children. Furthermore, as someone on social media pointed out, when Mr Joe Biden won the US presidency, it was reported far and wide, but not a single headline referred to him as “this grandfather”, which he is. Faced with the criticism, one of the newspapers, Aargauer Zeitung, apologised in a tweet.
Another illustration of the sexism endemic in the world, even in societies that claim to be progressive, occurred during the US vice-presidential debate. The incumbent Mr Mike Pence had continuously interrupted and spoken over current Vice-President Kamala Harris, until she was forced to firmly cut him off with a meme-worthy wave of her hand and the polite words, “Mr Vice President, I’m speaking, I’m speaking,” Almost immediately, “I’m speaking” began trending. It became a gif, a meme and appeared on t-shirts, face masks and mugs for sale. Many women around the world applauded Mrs Harris because they have faced and continue to face the same sort of interruption and being talked over in their daily lives at work, at home and at university.
When consideration is given to the fact that last year’s Global Gender Gap Report estimated that gender parity will not be attained for another 99 years, the need for women’s voices to be heard becomes clearer. IWD’s selection of ‘Choose to Challenge’ as its 2021 campaign theme resonates. Women have been left with little choice; they must firmly and directly challenge gender discrimination wherever it exists using whatever means are available to them, even if all they have are words. As writer and feminist Audre Lorde said: “When we speak, we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So, it is better to speak.”
