Amanda Ellis, sustainability scholar and director of global partnerships in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, has penned a piece for the International Leadership Association. Ellis is co-chair for the ILA’s 2021 Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
- NOVEMBER 2020 UPDATE: This article was featured on the cover of The Parliamentarian, the quarterly Journal of Commonwealth Parliaments published by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.
The piece, Building forward better – Why Women’s Leadership Matters, begins with a quote from Melinda Gates: “This is how we can emerge from the pandemic in all of its dimensions: by recognizing that women are not just victims of a broken world; they can be architects of a better one.”
Ellis lays out some facts: Comprising only some 8% of political leaders globally, women have accounted for an estimated 40% of the most successful responses to COVID-19; women-led countries have a six-times lower death rate than those led by male counterparts in similar countries. Then she makes the case that, “to build forward better, we must live up to our own existing promises of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, to truly level the playing field for the benefit of all.”