More than half the world’s seven billion people watched some part of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa and it is expected many more will tune in to the Brazil tournament over the next few weeks until July 13. Less than a tenth of those will watch the tournament’s women’s equivalent.
Even though records of women playing football date back to 1892, it took 61 years after the first men’s World Cup in 1930 for a parallel women’s event to start. Six editions of the women’s tournament have been held and it commands only 407.8 million viewers. Africa and the Middle East, grouped in the same bracket for the official statistics, contribute only 39.2 million of those eyeballs.
That number is influenced by factors including technology and access to information but it also serves as an indicator of the value of the women’s game to the region. It is no surprise that Nigeria and South Africa – two of the counties with functioning women’s football leagues – lead viewership statistics with 13 million and 4.2 million people watching the Women’s World Cup respectively.
<div id="attachment_6336" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6336" class="size-medium wp-image-6336" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/B13KYMN0421-300x208.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="208" />Cape Town Roses (Dark blue) v Gauteng (blue) during the 2013 Sasol League National Championship on the 25 November 2013 at Alabama Stadium ©Muzi Ntombela/BackpagePix</div>
Nigeria is, by some distance, the African country that has advanced furthest in women’s football. Matches were reported on from the 1940s and it has had a women’s league since 1978. The most recent edition of the league, the 2013/14 season, has three divisions funded by the Nigerian Football Federation in the absence of sponsorship.
Despite a lack of regular competition, especially in their region, Nigeria’s women’s team is the most successful in Africa.
The Super Falcons are the top-ranked team on the continent, sit 34th in the world and have triumphed in eight African Women’s Championships (AWC) between 1991 and 2010. They have also participated in every women’s World Cup but have failed to get out of the group stage.
A large part of their success is on account of intense practice. In early April, Nigeria organized a training camp for their final qualification match for the AWC in May, giving themselves seven weeks of training time. Included in that was a friendly match against Cameroon, the next-best team in Africa. Games such as these is what captain Evelyn Nwabuoko thinks will make the team even better.
“We need friendly matches and we ought to play bigger teams. It’s not about results but about access to your players. You get to know your players and those to rely on during international games,” says Nwabuoko.
South Africa’s national women’s team has fared better in that department. They were the only African country to participate in the Cyprus Cup, an annual invitation-only tournament for women’s teams. South Africa have been to the event four times since 2009 but only won three matches and struggled against European opposition.
However, players described it as important to their growth.
“I found things very different from club level to the international stage – the tactics, ball work at training and moving into space at specific times during matches was a key learning area for me,” says Shiwe Nogwanya, a striker who is based in Bloemfontein in South Africa’s Free State.
South Africa also has a strong domestic structure in place. Last year, petrochemicals company Sasol signed a four-year deal to sponsor the women’s league and national team. Their’s is a multi-tiered league consisting of 144 teams, 16 in each of the country’s nine provinces.
Teams play every weekend to ensure continuity of game time and the provincial winners compete in a week-long national championship
in December.
<div id="attachment_6337" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6337" class="size-medium wp-image-6337" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/B13LAMN0368-300x183.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="183" />Cape Town Roses (red) v Bloemfontein Celtics (green and white) during the 2013 Sasol League National Championship 3rd and 4th on the 01 December 2013 at Matlosana Stadium ©Muzi Ntombela/BackpagePix</div>
Although not ideal because there is no premiership, South Africa’s new women’s national coach, former Dutch player Vera Pauw, believes it provides the pathway for players to develop.
“Without the league, there is no national team because all those players play in the league. The big challenge is how to get the 144 Sasol League teams playing with the best against the best on a more regular basis,” says Pauw.
Other African teams do not even have the luxury of that problem. Ten African women’s teams, including Congo, Uganda, Angola and Benin, are not ranked because they have been inactive for more than 18 months. Two others, Liberia and Kenya, have not played more than five matches against official opposition and so are only provisionally ranked. Others like Mauritius have yet to play even a single match.
Funding is the major challenge, something Lydia Nsekera, the first woman elected to the FIFA executive committee, who hails from Burundi, agrees with.
“There is little or no funding for female football in Africa, compared to what the male teams get. In Africa, there are people who even question the rationale for funding female football,” says Nsekera.
Small attempts are being made to change that. FIFA provides all African member associations a grant of $250,000 a year and since 2008, 15% ($37,500) of that had to be set aside for women’s football. Just like the number of people keeping an eye on the women’s game, that money is significantly less than the men get but it is all the women’s game has
for now.

Not This Time  For Africa

It is dawn on a Thursday, the sun is barely over the horizon. A mist swirls between the 25 canoes packed on the banks of the Msunduzi River at the Natal Canoe Club in Pietermaritzburg. Jane Swarbreck and former Olympian Jen Theron are already sweating. They are paddlers in Group C, among the top women in African river racing.
The Dusi Canoe Marathon is a journey across 119 kilometers of wild and treacherous waters in the searing heat of KwaZulu-Natal, tackled only by the toughest competitors. This race draws tens of thousands, only a thousand qualify, and fewer make it to the finish line. Even fewer are women.
This is how Africa’s toughest river race has run since 1951. It was conceived by South African soldier Ian Player around a campfire in Italy, during World War II.  Six years after the war, Player was the only one to finish it. It took him six days, eight hours and 15 minutes. He survived two days of low rivers, a flash flood and a night adder bite.
For Swarbreck and Theron, who finished fifth in the women’s category, the challenges on the white waters would make Player tremble in his soaked boots.
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“There is a massive difference between navigating with an 18kg and a 22kg canoe. It is slower in a heavier one, but your lines in the water with a lighter canoe have to be clean. If not, you will sink and that can cost you four to five minutes a time. When you are racing, every minute counts,” says Theron.
It is a race won on the road as much as the river. The weight makes a huge difference when portaging – that is getting out of the water and carrying the canoe rather than risking it split in half on the rocks.
“The Dusi is unlike any race in South Africa. If you cannot run you do not stand a chance of winning… sometimes I just wish a man could race in a woman’s body to see how difficult it is,” she says.
Theron knows a thing or two about the limits of the female body. She competed in the 500 meter K2 and K1 sprints at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, finishing 8th and 7th respectively. For years, she trained alongside men and says there is a big difference in physicality between genders.
“Men have a faster recovery time because of their testosterone. It does not mean women train less than men, they train equally, it is just they are physically unable to,” says Theron.
Along with carrying heavy canoes, barring the first day when they set out in a women-only group, women racers face off canoe-to-canoe with men.
“On the water you have guys constantly tailing you in your wake, like the peloton in the Tour de France, it can take off 30% of their resistance in the water and you cannot get them off your back,” says Swarbreck.
An electrical engineer by day, Swarbreck is a South African adventure racer, who has at times ‘dabbled’ on the water. A year ago you would not have caught her near the Dusi race. She learned to paddle in a few months and was surprised when Theron approached her to team up.
“Even getting around the dam once and not falling in the water was an accomplishment for me. Now, I came fifth in the Dusi. Who knows what can happen next year,” says Swarbreck.
Despite having equal footing on the water, women that win prize money have a different story to tell.
“I think it is really unfair that the race organizers can give male winners R115,000 ($10,500) and the females half of that. It is the only race in South Africa where the top prizes are unequal,” says Theron.
The organizing committee cited that the prize pool was smaller due to a lack of depth of field in the women’s category. In the 2013 Fish River Canoe Marathon, also held in South Africa, the prize money sat at R30,000 ($2,750) for both genders.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-6201" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-078-080-SPORT-Dusi-JC-004-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
“What is more upsetting was the female winners were 23rd overall. A couple of years ago, coming in 64th would have meant you came first. You can see how women have improved and their race was much more exciting than the men’s,” says Theron.
Abbey Ulansky, known as the Dusi Queen, clinched her ninth pole position when she crossed the line with partner Robyn Kime, called the Dusi Princess, making it their third victory in a row as a pair.  They won with a slim lead of two minutes and eight seconds.
Along with Theron and Swarbreck was an unlikely pair made up of a Czech, Ana Adamova, who trained in the sub-zero temperatures of a European winter, and South African Abby Adie. From day one, they were nipping at the leaders’ heels.
It was an eventful final day for Adamova and Adie. The two started 90 seconds behind the leaders. What they did not see coming were children pelting them with stones 20 kilometers from the end. Adamova finished the race with blood pouring down her face.
Of the 817 canoes that took to the misty waters of the Msunduzi River in Pietermaritzburg, 715 made it to Durban three days later. It is a tough race for anyone, for these women it is just another day on the water.

‘I Wish A Man Could Race In A  Woman’s Body’

Women perform 66% of the world’s work, yet they only earn 10% of income generated across the globe, according to the United Nations Development Programme.
Statistics like these serve as a stark reminder of how far women still need to go to become equal players in the business arena. And with seven of the fastest-growing economies based in Africa, it is critical that female entrepreneurs take advantage of the expansion.
WEConnect International, a corporate-led, non-profit that empowers female business owners to succeed in local and global markets, has come to Africa’s shores to help businesswomen make their mark.
“If you look at the power of the markets, there is huge growth potential for our corporate clients in Africa,” says Elizabeth Vazquez, CEO and co-founder of WEConnect.
The network, which is headquartered in the United States, held its first African launch in South Africa. Vazquez says Nigeria is next.
WEConnect certifies women’s business enterprises based outside the United States to make it easier for multinational corporations to source from them. It also connects its corporate members with businesses that have at least a 51% women ownership.
The corporations represent $700 billion in annual purchasing power. They include Coca-Cola, HP, Intel, Pfizer, Master Card, Boeing, Wal-Mart, IBM, and Procter and Gamble.
“We are looking for countries that want to grow businesses, grow wealth and create jobs. We want early investment… because we know if you spend on women, they tend to invest in families and communities,” says Vazquez.
Last year, WEConnect’s corporate members as well as the Vital Voices Global Partnership and the Clinton Global Initiative announced a commitment to source $1.5 billion globally from female-owned businesses by 2018.
The agreement focuses on training female entrepreneurs to be ready to supply goods. The partners committed themselves to mentoring and targeting at least 15,000 female-owned businesses globally in that same five-year period.
WEConnect, which has female business owners from 70 different countries worldwide, has launched in South Africa with the blessing of the Trade and Industry Department.
“Studies have proven women are very good at paying back bank loans… but banks still don’t trust them. But it is not only [banks], but it is even by us in government. We still have a long way to go to realize women can drive and sustain business.
“[But it has been shown] wherever there are very powerful organizations of women, there will be very strong, sustainable women entrepreneurs because women thrive on networking,” Nomvula Makgotlho, chief director of women empowerment at the department, told guests attending the South African launch.
She says structures are imperative in lobbying for female entrepreneurs in order to change perceptions about how women have graduated from the kitchen and classroom into business.
“Women lack access to markets, they lack access to procurement. The journey of empowering women is a very difficult one. You make enemies on the way,” says Makgothlo.
Kalvenie Raja, who heads up the women’s fund at South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation, agrees that it has not been an easy journey for women in South Africa.
“When we did BEE [black economic empowerment], women were somehow lost along the way. We need to see women coming into these markets,” she told the launch.
Accenture, a management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, is one of WEConnect’s corporate clients. Linda Basson, who heads up procurement for Accenture South Africa, says the value of the network cannot be underestimated.
“By widening the supply base, you increase competition and also get greater creativity and innovation.”
“Being socially responsible is quite fashionable. We can’t look to government for hand-outs anymore.”
WEConnect has appointed Nathalie Chinje to head up its South African program. Chinje is the founder and director of an entirely female-owned marketing company, Upbeat Marketing.
While bias against female-led businesses remains entrenched, WEConnect is helping the so-called green ceiling turn a new shade of gender equality.

Get Out Of The Kitchen

As the world gathered to mourn Nelson Mandela’s passing in early December, I reflected on the lessons I learned from the great man – humility, strength and a passion for South Africa and her people – and how they have affected and guided my professional path. This has been particularly poignant for me in my role as ‘curator of people’ of the various companies in which I have worked. People are at the heart of every business and in my career, I have strived to imbue the leadership principles espoused by Mandela – that good leaders collaborate openly, honestly and consistently with others in order to reach a common goal.
Mandela’s commitment to the creation of a non-racial and non-sexist democracy in South Africa has had a particularly strong impact on my career. Women across the world continue to fight for recognition, particularly in the corporate environment – and I am grateful for the leaders, who fought for freedom and those who fought to ensure that women were not excluded from the conversations surrounding equal rights for all. I am particularly proud to represent women in the mining industry through my positions as executive director of Anglo American in South Africa and vice president of the South African Chamber of Mines. My appointment as the first black female in the position of executive director of Anglo American is a credit to the company’s commitment to transformation and diversity in the workplace.
I took up my post at Anglo American on 1 September 2012, at an incredibly difficult time for the South African mining industry. I immediately had to take on a crisis management role, as Anglo American and South Africa at large grappled with the tragedy at Marikana and the rolling strike action across the mining industry. This difficult period spurred critical conversations about the role of mining in our society. It was a turning point for the industry as we realized that we needed to work harder to ensure that more people benefit from our country’s phenomenal natural resources. I am proud to be a part of a company that is committed to this goal.
My position as executive head of human resources at Anglo American Platinum (prior to taking up the executive director role) prepared me for the extremely difficult time in the aftermath of Marikana. However, I was able to improve relationships with unions, bring wage negotiations to a successful conclusion and build a cohesive and unified team. I value that time as I learned how to deal with difficult situations and to value my independence and unique point of view. These were lessons I started to learn from an early age, when my parents, particularly my father, strove to instill an attitude of independence in me and ensured that I received a good education.
Both through the lessons that I learned from my previous career choices, as well as a strong personal conviction, I have remained committed to working with Anglo American’s executive leadership team, as a member of the Group Management Committee (GMC), to drive the company’s extensive transformation and empowerment programs.
One of the core components of my role at Anglo American is the creation of a unified team across the disparate organization. I am lucky that I can engage with stakeholders from a diversity of backgrounds. While my responsibilities at Anglo American involve communicating with those of different mindsets, it is important to remember that ultimately we’re all working towards a common goal. It is about coming up with solutions, while keeping your eye on the bigger picture.
This skill was honed when I worked for the Consultative Business Movement, helping to build relationships between business leaders and politicians in South Africa pre-1994, when the National Party was talking to the African National Congress  for the first time. It was at this time that I was able to put to good use the lessons I learned throughout my upbringing regarding facilitating and finding solutions to difficult problems. I am proud to have contributed to the smooth progress of democracy in South Africa, and count my tenure there as one of my biggest personal achievements.
I am inspired by people who have a vision for what they do, and follow through with what they believe in, no matter what obstacles they meet. I am also inspired by other women in leadership positions such as Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the chairperson of the African Union Commission, who are role models not only to me but to many other younger women. I also take time to refresh internally, making sure to spend quality time with my family, and connect with our good Lord for strength and endurance.

At The Helm Of Africa’s  Biggest Ship

This generation of young African women is the most ambitious yet. They are eager to build industries, reform societies, save lives, rewrite history, and transform the continent.
Our annual “20 Young Power African Women” list illuminates the brightest stars and Africa’s most outstanding female game changers. We enlisted a group of young, professional African women to help identify the most innovative, courageous, daring and successful young women aged 45 and under. It is a subjective list, no doubt, but it is the closest you will get to a definitive list.
Meet the 2013 class of 20 Young Power Women in Africa: the continent’s emerging power brokers, the Amazons to watch, and the custodians of tomorrow.
<h5>Isabel Dos Santos</h5>
<h5>Angolan. Investor</h5>
The daughter of Angola’s President, Jose Eduardo Dos Santos is Africa’s richest woman. She is also one of the continent’s most powerful businesswomen. Through her various holding companies, she controls a 25% stake in Angolan mobile telecom operator Unitel, a 25% stake in Angola’s Banco BIC, 25% of ZON Optimus, a listed Portuguese cable TV company, and just under 20% of Banco BPI, one of Portugal’s largest publicly traded banks. She is also partnering with Sonae, Portugal’s largest retailer, to launch 5 new food hypermarkets in Angola in 2014.
<h5>Mimi Alemayehou</h5>
<h5>Ethiopian. Executive Vice</h5>
<h5>President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)</h5>
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In 2010 U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Ethiopia-born Mimi Alemayehou as the Executive Vice President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the U.S. government’s development finance institution. She helps manage OPIC’s $16 billion war chest, channeling American capital to fund investment opportunities in emerging markets. Prior to her OPIC appointment, Alemayehou served as the United States Executive Director at the African Development Bank.
<h5>Lupita Nyong’o</h5>
<h5>Kenyan. Actress and Filmmaker</h5>
Nyong’o is a Kenyan actress and filmmaker who made her Hollywood debut in acclaimed film director Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” as Patsey. Nyong’o was born in Mexico, raised in Kenya and educated in the U.S. She is a graduate of Yale University’s School of Drama. In 2009, the breakout actress was also the lead in MTV’s award-winning drama series, Shuga. Nyong’o’s cousin, Isis Nyong’o was named one of Forbes 20 Youngest Power Women in Africa in 2011. Another cousin, Tavia Nyong’o, is a professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
<h5>Hadeel Ibrahim</h5>
<h5>Sudanese. Mo Ibrahim Foundation</h5>
Hadeel Ibrahim is the daughter of Sudanese-born British mobile telecoms billionaire Mo Ibrahim. She is the founding Executive Director of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which was established in 2006 to support leadership and good governance in Africa. She also serves on the Boards of the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice and the African Governance Institute (AGI).
&nbsp;
<h5>Minoush Abdel-Meguid</h5>
<h5>Egyptian. Private Equity Investor, Entrepreneur, Investment Banker</h5>
The Egyptian-born investment banker is the cofounder of Union Capital, an Egyptian investment firm primarily focused on small and medium-sized enterprises. Abdel-Meguid is also founding president of the Egyptian Young Bankers Association, an organization that mentors young banking professionals.
<h5>Monica Musonda</h5>
<h5>Zambian. Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Java Foods</h5>
Musonda is the founder of Java Foods, a Zambia-based food processing company that manufactures the eeZee brand of Instant Noodles. Musonda previously worked with Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, as the director of legal and corporate affairs at Dangote Group, where she led a project to build a cement plant in Zambia. She currently serves on the Boards of Dangote Industries Zambia Limited and the Central Bank of Zambia. Musonda is also the Chairperson of Kwacha Pension Trust Fund, Zambia’s largest single employer pension fund. She is an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow and was named a 2013 Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
<h5>Lindiwe Mazibuko</h5>
<h5>South African. Politician &amp; Parliamentary Leader for Democratic Alliance (DA)</h5>
Mazibuko, 33, is a Parliamentary Leader for the Democratic Alliance (MP for North Durban) and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly in South Africa. As the country’s fourth youngest parliamentarian, Mazibuko is already being touted as a future leader of the Democratic Alliance. Mazibuko was named South Africa’s Most Influential Woman in 2012 and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2013.
<h5>Tara Fela-Durotoye</h5>
<h5>Nigerian. Founder, House Of Tara</h5>
The Nigerian-born entrepreneur and lawyer is the founder of House Of Tara, Nigeria’s leading beauty and cosmetics company. House of Tara develops a wide range of African-themed beauty products and perfumes and also operates Nigeria’s foremost beauty academy. In 2013, Fela-Durotoye was nominated as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
<h5>Claire Akamanzi</h5>
<h5>Rwandan. Chief Operating Officer, Rwanda Development Board</h5>
Akamanzi, 34, is the Chief Operating Officer of the Rwandan Development Board (RDB), a government institution tasked with accelerating economic growth and development in Rwanda by enabling private sector growth. Akamanzi has had a successful career in public service, serving as Rwanda’s commercial diplomat in London and as a trade negotiator in Geneva for the Rwandan government at the World Trade Organization. She was also previously the Deputy Director-General of the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency (RIEPA).
<h5>PROSCOVIA Alengot Oromait</h5>
<h5>Ugandan. Member Of Parliament</h5>
Proscovia Oromait, 20, is the youngest parliamentarian in Africa. In 2012 she was elected Member of Parliament for Usuk County, Katakwi District in Uganda. Her father, Michael Oromait, served as the MP for the same Parliamentary seat before his death in July 2012. She is a member of Uganda’s ruling National Resistance Movement party.
<h5>Sibongile Sambo</h5>
<h5>South African. Chief Executive Officer and Founder of SRS Aviation</h5>
Sambo is the founder and Managing Director of SRS (Sibongile Rejoice Sambo) Aviation – the first black female owned aviation company in South Africa. SRS is an integrated provider of private aviation services offering South African and international clients VIP Charter, tourist charter and helicopter services. The company also provides maintenance, sales and fleet management services to private jet owners.
<h5>Vera Songwe</h5>
<h5>Cameroonian. Country Director, World Bank, Senegal</h5>
Vera Songwe, a Cameroonian national, serves as the World Bank’s Country Director for Senegal, Cape Verde, Gambia, Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau. She is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute with the Global Economy and Development and Africa Growth Initiative.
<h5>Angellah Kariuki</h5>
<h5>Tanzanian. Politician</h5>
Kariuki, 37, is a Special seat Member of Tanzania’s Parliament and the country’s Deputy Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs.
<div id="attachment_5969" style="width: 209px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5969" class="size-medium wp-image-5969" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/83362281-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" />Artist Wangechi Mutu attends the 2008 Whitney Museum of American Art&#8217;s gala</div>
<h5>Wangechi Mutu</h5>
<h5>Kenyan. Artist and Sculptor</h5>
Considered one of the most important contemporary African artists of recent years, Mutu’s first major solo exhibition in the U.S., Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey, opened at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina in March 2013. Mutu’s work has achieved much global acclaim with exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Miami Art Museum, Tate Modern in London, the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York, Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Her first solo exhibition at a major North American museum opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario in March 2010.
<h5>Ola Orekunrin</h5>
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<h5>Nigerian. Medical Doctor &amp; Founder, The Flying Doctors</h5>
Orekunrin, 25, is founder and Managing Director of Flying Doctors Nigeria Ltd., an air ambulance service based in Lagos, Nigeria. Orekunrin’s company is the first air ambulance service in West Africa to provide urgent helicopter, airplane ambulance and evacuation services for critically injured people. She is a 2013 New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute and was named a Young Global Leader in 2013 by the World Economic Forum.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5972" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Shot-02-CF234984-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" />
<h5>Rapelang Rabana</h5>
<h5>South African. Entrepreneur</h5>
One of Africa’s most recognizable young entrepreneurs, Rabana, 29, is the CEO and founder of Cape Town-based Yeigo Communications, which develops software for telecoms-related services including Voice over IP, instant messaging, SMS messaging and push email services. In 2008, Telfree, a Swiss mobile telecommunications firm, acquired a 51% stake in Yeigo. In December 2012 she founded Rekindle Learning, a company that provides adaptive mobile learning solutions.
<h5>Folake Folarin-Coker</h5>
<h5>Nigerian. Fashion Designer</h5>
Coker is the founder of Tiffany Amber, one of Africa’s leading fashion labels. She is the first African-based designer to showcase for two consecutive seasons at New York Fashion Week. In 2009, she won Designer of the Year at African Fashion International in Johannesburg, South Africa followed by Fashion Brand of the Year in 2011 at the Arise Fashion Week in Lagos, Nigeria.
<h5>Valentina da Luz Guebuza</h5>
<h5>Mozambiquan. Investor</h5>
The 33 year-old daughter of Mozambique’s President Armando Guebuza heads Focus 21 Management &amp; Development, a large family-owned investment holding company with interests in banking, telecommunications, fisheries, transport, mining and property. Focus 21 owns significant stakes in Beira Grain Terminal and Chinese Pay TV Company StarTimes’ operations in Mozambique.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5971" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/valentina_guebuza_20120505_32-Edit-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
<h5>NoViolet Bulawayo</h5>
<h5>Zimbabwean. Author</h5>
Zimbabwean-born author NoViolet Bulawayo is the first Black African female and the first Zimbabwean to be shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker prize for her debut novel “We Need New Names”. She is the author of the short story Hitting Budapest (2010), which won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing. NoViolet Bulawayo is currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University in California.
<h5>Amini Kajunju</h5>
<h5>Democratic Republic of Congo. President &amp; CEO,</h5>
<h5>Africa-America Institute</h5>
<div id="attachment_5967" style="width: 226px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5967" class="size-medium wp-image-5967" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/181837445-216x300.jpg" alt="" width="216" height="300" />Amini Kajunju speaks during the Africa-America Institute 60th Anniversary Awards Gala at New York Hilton on September 25, 2013 in New York City.</div>
A native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Amini Kajunju is the President &amp; CEO of the Africa-America Institute, and the first African woman to serve at the helm of the oldest non-profit organization of its kind in the United States. Kajunju joined the Africa-America Institute in October 2012 from the New York-based Workshop in Business Opportunities (WIBO) where she had served as Executive Director for 10 years. Under her leadership, Kajunju has bolstered the organization’s programming and served more entrepreneurs than any other institution of a similar size in New York City.
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20 Young Power Women In Africa 2013

You are a hard-hitting businesswoman or high-ranking female executive who has managed to avoid falling victim to poverty, res-trictive cultural attitudes, unfriendly workplace policies and biased education steering that generally stop most women on the second or third rung of the proverbial ladder of success.
Give yourself a pat on the back. Have some cake – eat it too
You certainly deserve it. It is no small feat in a world where women still make up roughly two-thirds of the population living below the poverty line. A world where yawning gender employment and wage gaps continue to prevail and top leadership and management roles are still held by men, even in typically women-dominated fields.
But the fact of the matter is, no matter what kind of corner-office view you have earned, you are still marooned in the big, bad sea of male majority. And you are still battling gender-based double-blinds.
A 2012 study commissioned by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) polled 60 Fortune 500 companies and found that executive committees were made up of just 14% women. In its 2012 census, the Business Women’s Association of South Africa found that the number of women in the working world has increased, but the number of women in senior leadership positions has decreased.
At the end of 2012, there were a measly 12 women CEOs/managing directors and 18 women chairpersons in the South Africa. Furthermore, women comprised only 21.4% of executive managerial positions and 17.1% of director roles in the country, the continent’s supposed economic pioneer. Depressing, yes? Even more shocking is that the same WSJ report discovered that only 18% of the women surveyed harbor CEO aspirations. It found that women were happy to adopt support roles fairly early in their careers and often exited the employment superhighway to fulfill family obligations. Often this happened before they had reached a point at which they could on-ramp again with ease, thus door-stopping their job prospects once and for all. In short, women are dreaming small and aiming low.
It is tempting to leave the business of change to someone else, perhaps understaffed, underfunded agents of women’s economic empowerment. But the fact of the matter is that the responsibility of elevating women into senior positions also lies with those already in senior leadership positions.
There is no time to sit around, waiting to see if a mass overhaul in company philosophy or government policy could lead to more widespread gender diversity in top management roles. Rather, the women who have fought tooth and nail to rise up through the ranks need to help revolutionize individual mindsets.
And how? Through mentorship.
The practice of sharing wisdom and inviting entrants into the workplace into personal networks has been shown to be instrumental in women’s career advancement. Such behavior instills confidence in and offers guidance to the intelligent, credible and bright women further downstream. Dr. Anita Bosch, the leader of the Women in the Workplace research pod at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa, explains: “Countless businesswomen battle with psychological hang-ups that can stymie their success. Mentorship helps budding professionals realize their value and chisel out their workplace identity, a point that’s especially important to females.”
Studies have also proven that mentorship allows the up-and-coming to make sense of business culture and set out a strategic career direction.
Take the case of Viola Manuel and her mentee, Simone Daniels. Manuel is the executive director of the Cape Chamber of Commerce, the former head of the Cape IT Initiative, an entrepreneur and founder of her own company, Afrivate. Like so many women before her, Manuel has had to claw her way up the ladder of success without a helping hand reaching down from a higher rung.
“When I was starting my career there were very few role models that were approachable and within reach, and I know that if I’d had someone to lean on I would have been even more successful, had an even more accelerated understating of my industry,” she explains.
It has prompted Manuel to partner with the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation as a mentor and take on a mentee in her personal capacity.
Simone Daniels was a final-year chemical engineering student at the University of Cape Town when she met Manuel. At the time, she was prepared to flush four painstaking years of organic chemistry, calculus and general physics down the drain even before she had experienced her first day of work.
“I was done. Dead set on giving it up,” she says emphatically.
After only a few mentorship sessions with Manuel, however, Daniels was not only prepared to continue her coursework, but was motivated to envision herself in a leadership position further down the road.
“She helped me work through what I wanted to do. From talking to her and bouncing ideas off of her, I realized that if I abandoned the degree, I’d likely never be able to go back to engineering, which would be heartbreaking. Now I think my end goal would be to be less of a process engineer and more of a manager,” Daniels explains.
Confident, passionate and not the least bit fazed by the prospect of having to prove herself in a male-dominated industry, Daniels may yet be jaded by the working world, but she is also pointedly aware of a trajectory.
It is a refreshing example of foresight. Although mentorship is not a technical skill, it is a perfect demonstration of the how it facilitates prof-essional and personal development.
Similarly, a relationship between a woman mentor and her mentee can be especially useful for tackling the conversation around how women manage time.
“There are different expectations for women, especially if you want to have a family. Learning how to address that and helping prepare people around you for that is key,” says Manuel.
And she would know. Manuel had three miscarriages before realizing that she needed to quit her job if she wanted to keep her baby. It is an int-ensely personal experience and her willingness to share it with others in similar situations is what makes her such an excellent mentor.
“Mentorship is about forming a connection and building up a relationship of support and trust. It’s about making yourself approachable, so mentees aren’t scared to ask questions,” Manuel explains.
At the end of the day, though, mentorship is a two-way street. Rebecca Pillay, the mentor manager at the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, points out that mentors also benefit. “They get to leave a legacy behind, stay relevant and connected with a younger generation, and even easily expand their networks.”
Pillay also stresses that mentorship does not have to be viewed as an all-consuming task.
“There are no formal rules of engagement, but by setting out a contract during your first interaction, you can very clearly lay out the frequency of meetings, address the way you want to communicate with mentees and show commitment on the part of both parties,” she says.
This means that businesswomen who already feel like they have barely enough time to find two matching socks in the morning do not need to feel overburdened by the idea of mentorship.
Pillay recommends only eight- to 10-hour-long meetings throughout the year, which adds up to a single workday.
During that time, she explains, it is important to set out high-value goals, remain authentic by meeting the mentee on their level, and avoid imposing your own expectations on the person you are guiding.
The end goal is to help women in business remove obstacles, give them the confidence to break through glass ceilings and provide them with the courage to detach themselves from sticky floors.
And the greater benefit, aside from the personal gains for both mentor and mentee?
For starters, the World Economic Forum points out that higher levels of growth domestic product per capita when gender equality in the workplace is better realized. Secondly, as Manuel so aptly explains, women put their income back into the economy in a more valuable way than men. Women are more likely to save or, if they have children, invest in them. And a healthier economy often means healthier salaries.
Global investment bank Goldman Sachs has even concluded that by closing the employment gender gap in the Brics nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and next-11 countries (three of which are African), per capita incomes could be pushed 14% higher than current projections by 2020 and 20% higher by 2030.
Of course, it goes without saying that the idea of affecting such macro-level change with a grassroots mentorship movement is a lofty aspiration. But then again, that’s exactly what women need to be doing: dreaming bigger and aiming higher. And as Viola sums up, “Whether we acknowledge it or not, it’s within the grasp of every woman in business to do something to elevate other women. That’s got to be our thinking. We have to find a way to contribute.”
So, ask yourself, are you doing your bit?

Mentorship: The missing link

Soccer-loving young girls in northern Kenya may never have heard of Elham Sayed Javad, but they have a lot to thank her for. If it was not for the Canadian-based fashion designer, they would not be able to play in official tournaments.
Javad created a hijab which operates magnetically. It opens and releases if it is pulled from anywhere around the neck area. Her design was one of the two approved by FIFA in June last year, when it lifted its ban on the religious garment, which had been in place for five years due to safety concerns.
<div id="attachment_5872" style="width: 268px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5872" class="size-medium wp-image-5872" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/000_Nic502245-258x300.jpg" alt="" width="258" height="300" />Bahraini player Muna al-Edaysi (R) vies with Palestnian Nivin al-Kolayb during their Women&#8217;s Arabia Cup football match in Manama on October 27, 2010. AFP PHOTO/ADAM JAN</div>
The ruling means women and girls who wear the hijab for religious reasons can now play in competitive soccer competitions. Having overcome that hurdle, all that was left for the girls from the Horn of Africa (Hodi region) was to find a competition to participate in.
Last year’s East Africa Cup presented them with a rare opportunity. The event is organized for youths between the ages of 11 and 16. It combines a range of sporting and cultural events and is lauded for highlighting gender issues. Apart from that, the team have little else.
There is no girls’ or women’s league to play in, and any ambitions of representing the country, while admirable, may prove little more than a pipe dream.
The level the Kenyan girls would have looked at, the under-17 event, appears to be one of the most problematic in their country and many others on the continent.
Kenya withdrew from the under-17 World Cup qualifiers in August because of what they claim was a logistical issue with their opponents, Equatorial Guinea. Kenya claimed the Equatoguineans’ communication regarding match details such as the venue and the kick-off time, as well as confirmation of visas, was received too late.
What actually occurred is not clear. Equatorial Guinea’s media had reported that Kenya may not arrive, but on the match day, August 16, activities went ahead as planned. The officials were present, the Equato-
guinean team warmed up, and stood to attention for their national anthem.
They were even instructed to kick off, and did, scoring a goal before the match was awarded in their favor because of the Kenyan no-show.
Farce aside, Equatorial Guinea have now qualified for the final playoffs which will decide which three African sides travel to Costa Rica for next year’s under-17 women’s World Cup. They will play Ghana in a two-legged tie this month.
The other clashes will be between Zambia, who beat Botswana to advance to this stage, and South Africa, who received a bye into the deciding stage. Nigeria were also given a free passage to the last six and will face Morocco.
For Kenya, all that’s left is disappointment and questions. While some of their aspiring players received a boost in the form of the lifting of the ban on the hijab, others were left high and dry by the under-17 shenanigans.
Their coach, Florence Adhiambo, says incidents like this make it difficult for the girls to stay motivated.
“It’s heartbreaking to see things like this happen. It discourages girls who have just started with their careers,” she says.
She is not alone in these sentiments. Former Nigeria captain Flo-rence Omagbemi, who was on the organizing committee for the 2012 under-17 World Cup, and remains on it for next year’s event, echoed those thoughts at a meeting in Zurich.
“All is not well with the game at the moment in Africa and we need to act fast to salvage the situation,” she says. “We have a lot of talented young girls with great passion for the game but they have no support from their federations. The soccer administrators are not doing much to help improve women’s soccer.”
The most obvious example of that is in the lack of fixtures. The African Women’s Championship has been taking place biennially since 1998 (the men’s has been going since 1957) and age-group qualifications are also held every two years. But the number of countries pulling out means the competition is often marred by the cancellation of fixtures.
More tellingly, there are no fully professional leagues in the women’s game on the continent. That leaves it lagging behind places like the United States, where the women’s game is run the same way as the men’s.
As a consequence, Nadi Sora, the coach of the Hodi girls’ team, explains they don’t have much to aspire to.
“There are no female role models, so there is still discrimination against girls. The whole community enjoys sport, but the girls do not have leagues, we just have tournaments, so we have to wait for a tournament to compete,” she says.
One woman to look up to is the president of Burundi’s football association, Lydia Nsekera, the first woman on FIFA’s executive committee, and who was profiled on these pages last month. Nsekera agrees that without regular competitive matches, women’s soccer will continue to lag behind. She has also identified financial reasons as one of the main roadblocks to developing the women’s game.
“In Africa, there are people who question the rationale for funding female football. But I am confident that, with the right encouragement, women’s football will evolve and reach the level of men,” Nsekera says decisively.
South Africa is one place where corporates have been captivated by the women’s game. In June, Sasol announced a four-year extension of its sponsorship for Banyana Banyana, the national women’s team, and the semi-professional soccer league for women. Many players in the league combine playing soccer while they are still studying.
At least in South Africa, there is some form of encouragement for girls to think seriously about the game. In other countries, especially those with more traditionalist ideas of the role of women, it is frowned upon for girls to take up the game.
FIFA’s unbanning of the hijab has helped for some, but Sora reveals that the Hodi girls’ team still face reprisal from their neighbors.
“The community looks down on us, they curse us and say things to us like, ‘you should not disrespect your culture’, but we continue to play, because when we play football, we are free.”
What the youngsters need are more people like Nassra Juma Mohammed, the founder of Zanzibar’s Women Fighters FC. Mohammed was inspired by the Swedish women’s soccer team, who visited the island in 1998, and wanted to start her own club.
The team are another of Africa’s success stories. They are sustainable because they draw funds from a small shop Mohammed started. And they are successful because their determination, more than their love of the game, allows them to challenge everyone from teachers to their husbands as they fight for their right to play soccer.
Some of the people standing in their way are hard-line religious men who claim women should not play soccer because “they shouldn’t wear shorts”. Even though these women continue to rebel against such restrictive ideals, if any one of them was to agree with the idea or felt she would have a better chance if she covered up, she need only don one of Javad’s hijabs to adhere to Islam, stay on the right side of the FIFA’s laws and still play the beautiful game.

Hijhab scores a goal against FIFA

Is the experience of coaching women different to coaching men? I posed this question at my coaching book club, which meets regularly for two hours of zesty discussion. We are all women.
The question sparked a lively exchange. Some of us had recently read Barsh and Cranston’s How Remarkable Women Lead. Some argued that the points made could equally apply to men.
I thought about the clients I have coached. Certainly men and women bring common issues to their sessions: self-esteem, presence, being grounded under stress, delegating, networking, managing upwards, etc.
So what have I noticed that is different?
Some women clients of mine want to get out of what is called the ‘velvet ghetto’, the ‘pink collar’ jobs for women in areas considered to be gendered: human resources, public relations and marketing. They want core business jobs that show their delivery on the bottom line. I have only had one male client trying to make this switch.
Recently, I attended a briefing in the financial services industry. The Manco was indeed a MAN-committee! Fourteen of the 15 members were men; the lone woman was the director of human resources.
But progress is being made. Career guidance at my convent school proposed social work and teaching prior to our becoming stay-at-home mothers.
Most of my women clients (with or without children) take on more household responsibility and struggle more with the work-life balance. In her keynote address at the launch of FORBES WOMAN AFRICA, Cheryl Carolus said: “Superman for women is a con job. Superman has a mother and never worries about matching socks both coming out of the washing machine, or what’s for dinner and whether there’s enough cat food.”
One of my black women clients sits on a board that has only two women members. One of her challenges was how to engage with the men during the breaks. She was angry: “The chairperson could only think of saying, ‘I like your shoes’. I realized that none of the men on the board have wives that work; they have ‘charity wives’. They can’t relate to us.”
I am not saying that all men are like this, and there certainly are ‘charity wives’ who are hard-working philanthropists. But our history of patriarchy leaves all of us, women and men, with a legacy that needs to be addressed alongside the legacy of race.
One black woman COO arrived at her new job. Her welcome from the CEO (a black man) included a description of how the previous incumbent (a woman) had failed. He had given her two days’ notice to prepare an important document for submission to the board. He had approved six weeks’ leave for her most senior direct report (a black man) at a critical time when compliance reporting was due. That same report had been on the shortlist for the COO position and was rumored to be the CEO’s preferred candidate. No wonder she felt that she was being set up to fail.
In her chapter, ‘Gender Issues in Business Coaching’ (Passmore, 2013), Sunny Stout-Rostron reviews Lerato Motsoaledi’s 2009 doctoral thesis, Executive Coaching in Diversity.
“Motsoaledi studied issues of male insubordination to female authority, finding that in several instances males refused to accept it, projecting in-adequacies on to women leaders and using aggression as a tool to dominate them. Although the women managers wielded power as individuals, they still had to deal with being a member of a subordinate group expected to comply with traditional patriarchal roles,” Stout-Rostron notes. Motsoaledi argues that being black as well as being a woman adds another layer of challenge that white women do not experience.
Research indicates that companies with more women in senior management have better results; others note that better, more forward-thinking firms hire more women.
In 1973, Samora Machel, the late president of Mozambique, said: “The emancipation of women is not an act of charity, or humanitarianism. The liberation of women is a fundamental necessity.”
Carolus, at the launch of this publication, noted, “Let us be there for our men folk – to help them on their way to the joys of freedom from sexism. For in the same manner that racism dehumanized black and white, sexism diminishes the potential of both men and women. Let us break the culture of silence we sometimes impose on ourselves.”
It is not easy. I have known of women executives who assert their authority so fiercely that when I have coached their male direct reports, loss of self-esteem is identified as an issue.
Moving forward requires commitment and compassion. I will share with you what has worked with my clients. Send me your experiences and concerns: helena.dolny@gmail.com

Should coaching be gendered?

The wealthiest women in the US have gotten even richer over the past year. Buoyed by a strong stock market and rising real estate prices, the combined net worth of the ten richest women on The Forbes 400 is $156.6 billion, up from $124.2 billion last year.
Altogether there are 48 women on this year’s Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, up from 45 last year. Newcomers include Elaine Marshall, who inherited a stake in private conglomerate Koch Industries from her late husband, and Anne Gittinger, granddaughter of the co-founder of Nordstrom  department stores.
Another new woman is a longtime Forbes 400 member: James Pritzker, a former lieutenant colonel in the army and an heir to the extended Chicago Pritzker family fortune, announced in August that she will now be known as Jennifer Pritzker. That makes her the first transgender billionaire. Pritzker runs the Pritzker Military Library in Chicago.
<div id="attachment_5799" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5799" class="size-medium wp-image-5799" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/006-Lauren-Powell-Jobs-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Lauren Powell Jobs</div>
The wealthiest woman in America, Christy Walton, is also the world’s richest woman, with a net worth Forbes pegs at $35.4 billion. Walton inherited a stake in retailer Wal-Mart and a chunk of stock in solar firm First Solar FSLR -1.23% when her husband, John Walton, died in a plane crash in 2005.
Walton ranks 6th on The Forbes 400 list. She leads a very private life in Jackson, Wyoming but in August had a rare bit of publicity when was given an award by the Imagen Foundation for producing the film Bless Me, Ultima, based on the book by Rudolfo Anaya, who is considered the father of Chicano literature. Walton, aged 59, has faced a number of difficulties in her life in addition to her husband’s death. Her son – her only child – battled cancer when he was just three years old and she fought a case of pneumonia that nearly killed her, according to the Imagen Foundation.
America’s second-richest woman is Alice Walton, sister-in-law of Christy Walton and daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. Forbes puts her net worth at $33.5 billion, a fortune mostly comprised of stock she inherited in Wal-Mart and her art collection. She ranks 8th on The Forbes 400. Alice Walton opened the Crystal Springs Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas in 2011, and it has proved to be a popular attraction, already clocking 1 million visitors.
<div id="attachment_5801" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5801" class="size-medium wp-image-5801" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/004-Abigain-Johnson-300x229.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="229" />Abigain Johnson</div>
Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, ranks 35th on The Forbes 400. She is the richest woman in Silicon Valley and is the 6th richest woman on the list, with a net worth of $11.7 billion.
Women still make up a minority of The Forbes 400 richest – just 12% of this elite group. Most of the women inherited their fortunes; only seven of the 45 started their own businesses or co-founded them with their husbands.
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The richest women in America 2013

Kopano, dress me up but I don’t want to look like $1 million.’
This is an instruction that 27-year-old Kopano Motsoeneng is very familiar with. ‘While the wheels of fashion are moving at the speed of light, many women still value the safety of classic, timeless style. These are the women Motsoeneng caters for. He is a stylist whose passion for making women look good has motivated him to embark on a career where he has the pleasure of telling high-earning women what to wear.
Motsoeneng’s introduction to the fashion world came at the tender age of 11. He recalls advising girls in his school on their Matric farewell dresses.
He also devoured the contents of any fashion magazine he could get his hands on, until he finished high school, and registered at a fashion school in Johannesburg, South Africa. Here Motsoeneng learned that being a fashion student did not necessarily mean that all you could become was a designer. He was hopeless at making patterns, but he was a skilled salesperson.
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He joined small boutiques, which allowed him to interact with cust-omers and introduce them to different designers’ brands. Motsoeneng identified a unique opportunity to pair designers with potential clients.
In 2012, he launched Strictly KP. His main order of business was hosting intimate fashion events where a number of local designers and potential clients gathered in a small venue set up like a boutique store. Designers showcased their garments and clients nibbled on snacks and sipped champagne as they shopped.
With each gathering, Motsoeneng cemented his relationship with the circle of designers. They began to trust him to sell their clothes, while maintaining respect for their labels. His network to diversify, as clients began seeking out Motsoeneng’s fashion advice talent on a more personal level.
One day he received an unusual request: ‘I’m going on a trip, do you mind packing for me?’
“All I thought was, ‘you only see this on reality television!,” Motsoeneng laughs.
It was his first personal styling job. The client was going to Europe and needed him to pack her luggage “strategically”. He was paid $37 just to pack lightly enough to allow the woman space for shopping spree purchases. She must have been happy with his decisions; she still calls on him regularly.
With each consultation, Motsoe-neng aims to help a woman identify her signature style and feel confident about the choice. His typical clients are self-assured corporate leaders, who need him to diffuse the black, grey and navy items in their wardrobes with some vibrant colors that can they can wear to social events.
Over time, however, Motsoeneng has learnt that not all corporate women wear black, grey and navy suits. Twenty-nine-year-old head of operations at Liberty Intelligence Insurance, Lerato Olahleng, expresses her quirky personality within the confines of her ‘boring’ office dress code.
When she first met Motsoeneng, he helped her pick out an outfit at the store where he worked. He studied her style and would keep her informed about any new stock that she might be interested in before it hit the shelves.
Olahleng says Motsoeneng has helped see her wardrobe’s potential.
“He’s helped to get rid of that feeling you get when you look into your wardrobe and think you have nothing to wear,” she says.
For Olahleng, money is no object when it comes to Motsoeneng’s services. She says she loves being able to sleep in on a Saturday morning and spend much-needed quality time with family and friends, instead of being at the mercy of busy, overwhelming malls, trying to find something to wear.
Motsoeneng introduced Olahleng to the brain child of 29-year-old designer Isabelle Lötter, Sies Isabelle! The label is aimed at larger women, who enjoy looking both feminine and fashionable.
And when Olahleng saw an ele-gantly draped tweed coat-dress by Sies Isabelle!, she couldn’t resist. Lötter says the coat-dress is a top seller because it is a flattering cut.
“My target market is a curvy figure like myself. I basically design for me… there’s a big gap in the market for curvaceous women who have style but can only shop at stores like Donna Claire,” explains Lötter.
Her range is so wide that both her 75-year-old grandmother and a 14-year-old cousin can wear her designs. Lötter particularly appeals to professionals like Olahleng, because her clothes are expressive and not rigidly corporate; they can easily be dressed up or down.
The fashion business is a tough one. Countries like China are mass producing their goods much faster than the local industry.
“South Africa’s textile industry is almost non-existent at this point… a lot of my fabrics are imported,” Lötter admits.
She says South African designers are no competition for China, mainly because local consumers are not discerning enough.
“They don’t understand why they should pay $67 for a dress when they can buy it for $9.60 at China Town.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5751" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2013-Oct-062-063-ENTR-Kopano-002-209x300.jpg" alt="" width="209" height="300" />
Despite what you may think, Motsoeneng does not only style women. He consults with one couple on a weekly basis, planning both their wardrobes for the week ahead. At first he was advising only the woman, but one day she asked him to style her husband, a prominent businessman who travels frequently. When he received a message saying, ‘Thank you so much for picking this outfit for him, he went on his trip with a spring in his step’, Motsoeneng realized how much a good outfit can do for men as well.
That aside, most of his clients are women. One of the biggest lessons he has learnt is that even high-powered businesswomen have insecurities.
“As much as women say they don’t care what people say, they really do, because they are often judged by what they look like,” he explains.
One of Motsoeneng’s more unusual clients is neither a businesswoman nor a corporate player. Karusha Pillay is a nursery school teacher who, in her own words, “doesn’t get dolled up for work” in case she ruins her clothes. Outside work, however, she embraces her femininity and wants to look glamorous.
Pillay does not earn a lot of money, but says she finds Motsoeneng’s services invaluable, because he sources pieces that are tailored for her body shape and which last season after season. Pillay says she was won over by Motsoeneng’s personal approach.
“Styling is very personal because I come into your personal space, but I always try to establish trust with my clients on first consultation,” says Motsoeneng.
Another of his secret weapons is using young, talented South African designers who have the potential to compete with international labels like Zara, but cannot afford the rent. Sourcing from less recognized brands gives his clients a sense of exclusivity, which is often lost when trawling the retail chains in a shopping mall.
And despite all the challenges that the South African textile industry presents, Motsoeneng believes that “you are not taking a step back; you’re simply doing the cha-cha”.

Pairing to get the right fit

More than five years ago, she found herself on the wrong side of history when South Africa’s ruling party opted for leaders whom it believed would be more connected to the country’s poor and working class.
But now Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who has been in the background since then, has been appointed as a leader of the world’s largest bureaucracy, the United Nations (UN).
For the next four years, she will serve as the executive director of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women, known colloquially as UN Women.
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“It’s always been a defining feature for me, that if anything works, it must work for women. I have always known that this is my benchmark and I must get there as quickly as possible… If I cannot facilitate change, God forbid!” she says.
The body, which was formed in 2010, is tasked with promoting women’s rights and their participation in global affairs. UN Women can boast some successes, such as helping women gain seats in seven national elections, and reforming laws and policies in 26 countries to increase women’s access to economic assets and social protection.
But Mlambo-Ngcuka has her work cut out for her. Although there are calls, which she supports, to develop a stand-alone UN goal to achieve gender equality, the organization faces serious challenges, including inadequate funding.
Also, in a time when the world has to deal with economic uncertainty, more than often, budget cuts negatively affect the progress of women and entrench gender inequalities.
Mlambo-Ngcuka joins a list of women who were shining stars in former South African president Thabo Mbeki’s cabinet and have since left the country to take up international positions&#8230; Mlambo-Ngcuka, African Union Commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and special envoy on gender at the African Development Bank, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, could all, arguably, in their own right lead South Africa.
However, the experience Mlambo-Ngcuka gained while she served in government, and her well-known
tenacity, will now be put to use on the global stage.
She insists Africa will be a priority, but not at the expense of other regions.
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“When you think about Africa, the first thing that comes to your mind is poverty. And yet there’s a lot of good things in Africa… I want for us to start picturing a different Africa and bring forward that Africa does have resources. That there is a fighting spirit that we need to harness,” she says.
Mlambo-Ngcuka is not alone in her approach. For far too long, Africa has been depicted as the begging bowl of the world , a perception that Dlamini-Zuma also wants to remedy.
Mlambo-Ngcula says she plans to work closely with Dlamini-Zuma, as well as Africa’s two women presidents, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf from Liberia and Malawi’s Joyce Banda.
“I would want to go to these women on the issues I’m going to be pushing forward as they relate to Africa. I actually want to harness their stature and the influence they have to make a push. Also, I will need them in working with the other leaders in Africa.”
There are strategic countries on the continent whose buy-in Mlambo-Ngcuka will have to get, such as Nigeria, with its wealth of powerful and influential women.
Women across the world face a multitude of challenges, which change in severity depending on where they live and what their social standing is. Mlambo-Ngcuka believes that if she can improve the quality of education and reproductive health, her time at the UN will not have been wasted.
“One of the things that is uniquely disabling sometimes to women, is failure to address their reproductive health. Women have an unwanted baby when they are not ready to support the child. You trigger inter-generational poverty and the life of that woman comes to a standstill. So allowing women to reach their full potential without having to deal with the responsibility of having a family they have not planned for, is, for me, very important.”
Mlambo-Ngcuka took office in August 2013 and has a number of initial ideas on how she will improve UN Women. When her predecessor, former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, resigned to focus on politics, she was criticized in some quarters for not leaving much of a legacy. Some of this was blamed on her role being confined to raising awareness about women’s living conditions and UN Women having no executive powers.
“I don’t want to be all gung-ho right at the beginning, and maybe create that vibe for myself, but really, I am also concerned. I cannot leave my country to be a token. We need to do something that is destiny-changing for women.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5746" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2013-Oct-054-057-CA-Phumzile-004-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
“In my discussions with UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, he made it very clear it is important that we make an impact on women. I am hoping that I can lean on him and when it turns out actually that there isn’t scope for that, I can go and speak to him.”
Mlambo-Ngcuka’s strategy is not to reinvent the wheel, but to build on what people are currently doing. Her aim is to give UN Women a much stronger presence and make sure that women’s issues are more visible.
“I want to make sure women are in your face… I just feel our voice is a bit muzzled, a bit timid. And I feel that this is one time where you want to lead from the front.”

SA’s global citizen: The new head of UN Women wants to redefine the world for women.

Just about every self-help movement from spirituality to leadership to parenting extols the virtue of being more present. We’re told to cultivate being introspective, still, and to pay attention to what we’re doing at the time we’re doing it. If we focus on the person or task in front of us, we give them, and ourselves, a gift. I wholeheartedly believe this is a good and positive thing.
But man, do I struggle with it.
I am a master multitasker. I’m a business owner, a mother of two school-age kids, and involved in a bunch of outside activities. I feel like my days are often a race against time, with dates and details bouncing in and out of my head like super important ping pong balls. That’s not even talking about the electronic devices, social media, and emails I keep up with. (I am admittedly a news and good TV junkie. Here’s looking at you Breaking Bad.) Uh oh, I digressed.
Yes, I want to be more present. I want to tune out work when I’m home, and be more often in the moment. I’m regularly trying new ideas that push me along in that direction — and I’ve made some decent progress (with focus and effort.)
For all you sworn multitaskers, take heart. That efficiency you’ve cultivated can be coupled with an intent to be present with lots of positive benefits. Not only will being more present help you feel less stressed and promote better relationships, studies show that mindfulness can also benefit your physical health and even increase your lifespan.
Here are some ideas for how to go from distracted to mindfully present:
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<h4>1) Turn off electronics and email</h4>
No surprise that this one tops the list; it’s my own Achilles heel. The Energy Project’s Tony Schwartzhas found that 80% of us are rarely, if ever, disconnected from our email. There are many advantages to being constantly reachable, but in the long term, in addition to causing stress and unnecessary distraction, it can also alter the way we think and behave.
As Schwartz says, “it isn’t overload we’re battling anymore, it’s addiction — to action, and information, and connection, but above all to instant gratification.” We no longer know how to wait, and our activities are tainted by listening for that ping that tells us we have a message.  If you want to be more present, turn off your electronics and stop checking your email when you’re having a conversation with someone, working on a project that requires concentration, or even when you just want to enjoy the moment.
Schwartz, for example, is a major proponent of an electronics-free lunch break. Leaving your smartphone in the car until after dinner or checking it at the door are other options. I’ve learned that if my phone is in front of me, I’ll check it. Better to put it away.
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<h4>2) Center before a conversation</h4>
Centering is a key skill that coaches learn before meeting with a client. To be a good coach, you need to be fully present and actively listening — which requires tuning out any static or energy from whatever came beforehand. The process is simple. Before you begin a conversation or meeting, take a moment and get intentional about how you want to show up. I also take a few deep breaths and remove distractions. If I’m at my desk, I move so I’m away from my workspace.
This allows me to come into a coaching session calm, open and present. Consider the opposite. We all know what it feels like to have someone enter a room stressed, distracted, and still reeling from their last meeting.
When you practice active listening, it’s far easier to stay in the moment as well.  Active listening is what it sounds like: not only do you listen to someone, but you actively ask questions and engage in the conversation.  In a helpful article, psychologist John M. Grohol lays out some basic active listening tips and techniques. These include restating what you’ve just heard to be sure you understand it clearly (“So you think office policy about PTO needs to change?”) and sharing your observations about what the person has said (“You seem frustrated.”)
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<h4>3) Break from the madness</h4>
As I’ve mentioned before, studies have shown that taking a short break between tasks helps the mind recharge and refocus. Zen teacher, CEO, and author Marc Lesser has this advice for how to integrate breaks to reduce stress and a speeding mind. The first is to “rest mentally and physically in between or outside of your usual activities, perhaps instituting a regular practice of meditation, retreats, breaks, and reflection. In the midst of a busy life, a full work day, go for a walk, do yoga, read some poetry.”
If yoga or poetry isn’t your bag, Lesser suggests taking a few moments to breathe deeply and reflect. Anyone can do this without leaving their desk.
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<h4>4) Schedule important</h4>
discussions without a hard stop
When we’re in back-to-back meetings, it’s difficult to be present because we’re also thinking of what happened before and what’s next. For important discussions, leave room for the conversation. Make sure to structure a situation where you can both focus on what the other has to say, perhaps even out of the office. This also means not having a hard stop or starting a conversation at the end of the day.
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<h4>5) Consider (and verbalize)</h4>
what you’re saying no to
For everything we say yes to, we’re saying no to something else. When you reflect on that and verbalize it, the decision is much easier. i.e. “I’m saying no to my kids so I can respond to a non-urgent email” or “I’m saying no to planning this pivotal project so I can say yes to surfing Twitter.” When you put it out there, the distinction often makes the real choice laughable. What’s taking away our full and focused presence doesn’t deserve it at all.

The  Multitaskers’

Some race reductionists have argued that black people cannot be racist. According to this argument, black people are so dominated by whites in every sphere that they could not possibly be racist, even if they tried.
To be racist, goes their argument, a group must possess state or economic power to collectively subjugate those of a different group, those who do not look like them.
At best, blacks can despise whites for all the pain they have caused since their ancestors first left Europe in search of new lands and resources some 500 years ago.
As you might imagine, such an argument has the ability to raise passions, regardless of which side of the debate one chooses. It is also, of course, a nonsensical premise. Blacks are human, and from time immemorial, human beings have had prejudices based on all sorts of things, from which side of the river one hails to the color of their hair.
There is an equally flawed theory, based on more or less the same sentiments, held by the ‘blacks cannot be racist’ brigade. This time, it is led by women, who think that by merely being women, they possess the magical skills to manage people.
Women bosses are allegedly more compassionate, consensus-orientated and, unlike their male counterparts, not overly competitive.
Really?
Before we get ahead of ourselves, let me hasten to add that I have no doubt that there are women leaders out there like that. By the same token, however, there are women leaders who are everything but.
To assume, therefore, that for no other reason than they are blessed with
more X chromosomes, that they bring to boardrooms, the shop floor and wherever else they manage people, a divinely ordained insight into how to get human beings to be more productive, get on with each other and go home to be excellent partners and parents, is ridiculous.
It is no better than the delusion that blacks are incapable of racism simply because they are black. It may make women feel better, but it is bigoted, for it attributes to women, characteristics that they acquired by mere membership of a group they had no say in joining and therefore cannot escape.
Anyone who believes that the biological factors they possess – the color of their skin, eyes or the dominant hand they use – give them special powers and advantages over other human beings, is on the road to nowhere.
One would think that people with some experience in the workplace and the boardroom have seen that both great and lousy leaders come in all shapes, sizes and genders.
Political correctness demands that we believe women bring a ‘softness’ and more ‘heart’ to the boardroom, as if women in business are recruited from the convent rather than the coalface where business leaders are made. We are told that their maternal instincts (and goodness knows what else) gives them the abilities that their peers around the boardroom table do not share.
As is the case with black people, by now women should refuse to be treated as if they are monolithic judged on the performance of those who look like them. They should not only refuse this association when it is negative, but should reject it altogether when told they are the better species for no other reason than they are women.
To accept, as some women have, that their gender gives them some advantage is to deny their own humanness and the effort and skill it takes to climb the corporate ladder.
The ‘I am a great boss because I am a woman’ brigade denies the role of training, mentoring and old-fashioned hard work that makes excellent bosses excellent. It tells men that kindness and empathy are feminine traits and they should therefore play them down, lest their masculinity be questioned.
It is up to women to correct this ever-growing misconception that it is something to do with gender and not abilities and skills that makes them excellent leaders.
If the women’s movement has learnt anything from centuries of patriarchy it should be that sooner rather than later, those who imagine themselves to be virtuous because of who they are rather than what they do, are eventually caught out and put in their place.
It is women who must call the likes of Margaret Thatcher to order for saying: ‘if you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman’. It may be a great quote, but it brings with it seeds of counterarguments and examples of how the opposite is true.
Nature and nurture have provided men and women with different ways of seeing the world. That, however, is no excuse for allowing how we have been socialized to determine what it takes to be an excellent business leader.

Women are not inherently good

I go into everything with a huge ego,” DailyWorth founder Amanda Steinberg told more than 100 entrepreneurs this July. What she conceded could be seen as a huge personal defect in the social world turned out to be her biggest strength in raising well over $4 million for her powerhouse personal finance site that’s among the best of the web for women.
<div id="attachment_5676" style="width: 239px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5676" class="size-medium wp-image-5676" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/iStock_000003551208Large-229x300.jpg" alt="" width="229" height="300" />Plant vigorously sprouting from a pile of golden coins &#8211; concept for good investments</div>
Steinberg picked up the mic last month to talk to female entrepreneurs – in the room, on a conference call and streamed through Google GOOG +0.02% hangout (watch the whole thing, it’s totally worth it) – about the complex process of raising capital for young companies. “I’m going to keep it real,” she said as she regaled the audience with tales from the nine months it took her to raise the first $850,000 for DailyWorth in 2011. She was running on fumes, parenting two small children solo and going through a divorce. Real talk: it got ugly.
But Steinberg’s been-there-done-that advice was frank and refreshing and inspired me to tap other female founders in my network – from YC-alums fresh out of seed rounds to trailblazers with millions in the bank – to find more no BS counsel for entrepreneurs looking to impress investors and fill their own startup coffers.
Steinberg breaks down her top-level fundraising advice into four must-have items, and because her insight is on display on YouTube, we’ll keep it basic (but oh-so-helpful) in this space.
No. 1, a mentor (“Everybody and every website says you need one, but it’s true. You really do. There’s just so much you don’t know”), No. 2, the obvious: your deck (slides on core value proposition, the size of your market, who the customer is, competition, exit strategy, etc.). No. 3, your financial model (map out revenue and expenses with growth rate: “It really shows why you need capital – it’s the justification of what that cash is going to do). No. 4, an executive summary (think the most kick-ass cover letter ever, as in “Here’s why I’m awesome, here’s why it’s going to succeed, here’s why you should talk to me).
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<h4>Katia Beauchamp, cofounder and co-CEO, Birchbox</h4>
Beauchamp and cofounder/co-CEO Hayley Barna have raised more than $11 million for Birchbox, the company that set the subscription commerce trend in motion and has seen continued success since its 2010 launch. What they’ve learned from the process of fundraising while simultaneously scaling a business is the importance of time management – or more specifically learning what’s just a waste of time.
Their advice? Finding investors whose area of interest – or market of choice – is the most aligned with your business. You’re e-commerce and they invest in health tech? You might want to skip it – no matter how many mutual acquaintances you have. “Taking the time to find the right investors is a huge, huge part of the way to spend your time fundraising the most wisely,” Beauchamp told me in early August. “When you talk to VCs they should be someone in your wheelhouse – or for us someone who at least likes the idea of e-commerce.”
This helped in two ways. One, the Birchbox founders didn’t waste their breath on uninterested parties, but more importantly they didn’t spend hours explaining a female-focused business model to male investors who couldn’t – or wouldn’t – understand the consumer. “Pitching is a complex process,” she says, “But pitching to someone whose interests are so far from yours that you have to reeducate them adds a whole new layer.” Lesson learned: choose wisely.
<h4>Michelle Crosby,</h4>
<h4>founder and CEO, Wevorce</h4>
As far as Crosby is concerned, the key to raising capital – whether via angels or venture capitalists – is as much managing your own expectations as it is wowing investors with a flashy business plan. The former attorney applied her disciplined approach in the courtroom to build a structure that she used in every investor meeting. “It’s helped me to manage my own mindset,” she says. “And keep worry – and overwhelming eagerness – at bay as much as possible.” She laughs. “Well those things come anyway, but creating structure helps.”
So what is it? It starts, like any first date, with a bit of flattery. “I call it the bromance section of the meeting and it always comes first,” Crosby says. “I like to lead with a question—usually something I’ve researched before-hand, some nugget of uniqueness about this person –because neuroscience tells us that when someone feels listened to the same part of their brain lights up as when they feel loved.”
Once the meeting is formally underway and decks are on display, Crosby, whose business focuses on divorcing families, turns to cross-checking intention. “I’m focused on recognizing whether their intentions as an investor align with my intentions for the business. We intend to do well by doing good. So I’m looking for people who know that and believe in it from the moment we meet. And I do that by asking what they like the most about the company. If it’s ‘I want a healthy return,’ then cool – but they’re maybe not for us.”
The third prong is (by my own estimation) one of the savviest pieces of advice I’ve heard on the process. Ask this question: How do you see yourself being involved with the company? If the response is a blank stare, it’s a strong sign they’re not interested and, as Crosby puts it, you might as well know that right away. But the ones with clear ideas will stand out – and give you the opening for a strong close on your own terms.
“I always end by asking them about next steps,” she says. “Can I put you down for the round and for how much? If you’re going to think about it, I’ll say I’m holding your spot for X number of days and then release it.” That way you’re killing two birds: one, you’re giving investors and easy out with no hard feelings and two, managing those pesky expectations again. Waiting by the phone is the worst way to spend your time.
Crosby’s fellow YC-alum Deyle, whose Lollipuff auctions second-hand designer goods with the promise of authenticity, actually stopped fundraising mid-process earlier this year. “We received commitments from angels and also a few VCs,” she explains, “But ultimately felt that after putting so much effort into fundraising it was better as an already profitable company to keep our focus on the product.” She may have been right: after doubling users since June, Deyle says investors are starting to pursue them.
Despite that, Deyle and her two cofounders put a method in place that’s a useful piece of advice for all founding teams – provided they’ve got the manpower. “We decided up-front that it was important for one of us to stay back and focus solely on product,” she says. “Not just to keep the lights on, but to keep a real distance from the fundraising process.”
“It’s an emotionally exhausting time,” she says. “Because every time you receive a no – or even a maybe which is really a no – it’s almost as if someone’s telling you your baby is ugly. So ugly they don’t even want to look at it!” Having a cofounder who’s not poisoned by “nos” Deyle says, helped the team as a whole to stay grounded, and to appreciate what they’d built. In other words, to remind them that their baby wasn’t ugly – no matter what they’d heard in a bad meeting.

Female founders speak up:

Anastasia Tsichlas and Ria Ledwaba’s names are synonymous with football in South Africa. The two are seen as female powerhouses and adored by fans and players alike—both were owners of hugely successful Premier Soccer League (PSL) teams.
Tsichlas and Ledwaba have made names for themselves in the male-dominated football world, but women are still underrepresented in all areas of the sport. Even the South African Football Association (Safa) is lacking on this front—most of its senior management is male.
“We want to see transformation. As the first woman to have made it in football, I felt one of my responsibilities [apart from developing soccer abilities], was to develop other women,” says Tsichlas.
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It’s not been an easy road, says Ledwaba. Being a woman involved in football meant treading a difficult path with few mentors and little sponsorship.
“Finance plays a big role in running a successful team. When I entered soccer, I entered it because that was my heart’s true calling. The environment was hostile, but I persevered because I was determined to get the best for the players and to get my team promoted to the Premier Soccer League,” says Ledwaba.
Tsichlas, the first woman in Africa to be elected to Fifa, owned Mamelodi Sundowns before it was taken over by mining magnate Patrice Motsepe and Ledwaba owned Ria Stars.
“The dream of Ria Stars was realized. My team played in the PSL for two seasons but due to lack of sponsorship I could no longer manage to run the team successfully. I’m still involved in football through the commercial committee at Safa and the Safa Women’s Soccer Committee,” says Ledwaba.
Transformation is a word both use often. Ledwaba was recently appointed deputy chairperson of the Transformation Commission set up by Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula.
Tsichlas was the general manager of Sundowns at a time when most scoffed at the mere idea of a woman holding such a position. Her strategy there was to employ women in strategic positions as a way to address the gender imbalance.
“I like to develop women not only in the sport but also in jobs with responsibilities,” she says.
Sundowns was the best team from 1990 to 2000. Tsichlas recalls endless days in the townships during the stormy 1980s—“the glory days of football,” she says.
“The power of football is tremendous. It is unbelievable how it can bring people together,” says Tsichlas.
Today, South African football is a shadow of its former self. Tsichlas says the problem lies in a lack of development and the absence of big stars.
“Big stars come from development, from the townships. We need to develop players. We can’t keep buying the best players. I’d rather have a player who came through my structures and loved the club, a player with a real hunger to play. These are players who have soccer in their hearts and not in their pockets,” says Tsichlas.
Ledwaba says the country has world-class facilities, but development lags.
“Transformation is required in most schools. Soccer needs to be part of every primary and high school sport curriculum,” she says.
It’s a sentiment Tsichlas echoes.
How then does South Africa get back into the game?
“With the proper technical and administration, we’ll get back into it. We also need to learn to build from the bottom up,” says Ledwaba.
Tsichlas, who has earned the moniker ‘The Iron Lady’, is more forthright and places the blame on too much politics in football.
“It can be done if we all speak the same language. We have the resources—money through sponsors—and the ability. But we don’t have unity because there is a lot of politics in our football, that is why we keep failing as a football nation. We blame the coaches and the players but we don’t look in the mirror at ourselves, as administrators. It starts at the top and trickles down to the clubs. We have to unite football like years ago when we were the top team in Africa,” she says.
Women’s football on the other hand, seems to be in better state. Banyana Banyana qualified to play at the Olympics.
“But with women’s soccer, the marketing of the national team needs to improve and we need to fill the stadiums when they play,” says Ledwaba.
Unlike their male counterparts, women footballers do not earn salaries but rather bonuses as they are not seen as professional players. Tsichlas believes a women’s section in the PSL is key in developing women’s football.
Ledwaba’s exit from Ria Stars was fuelled by big companies’ tendency to support the big teams.
“But the PSL teams now get a sizeable monthly allowance from PSL so every team is on an equal footing,” she says.
Still, Ledwaba has no regrets.
“My dream was realized—I succeeded against all odds. No regrets, just plenty of lessons. I learnt my limits and I got to understand the dynamics of a male-dominated industry,” says Ledwaba.
Tsichlas has several football feathers in her cap. She is the first woman elected to the National Soccer League (NSL)/PSL executive, as well as the first woman to be elected to the executive committee of Safa. She is also the first South African woman representative on the Confederation of African Football.

Tag: Women

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