Ethiopia: Women occupy 50 percent of new cabinet
Ethiopia: Women occupy 50 percent of new cabinet
Women have been assigned key ministerial portfolios, including ministries of peace, trade and industry, and defence.
Ethiopia's new cabinet is now a record 50 percent female, including the country's first woman defence minister, after legislators unanimously approved the nominations put forward by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
"Our women ministers will disprove the old adage that women can't lead," Abiy said while presenting his choices on Tuesday. "This decision is the first in the history of Ethiopia and probably in Africa," he added. The Horn of Africa nation joins a handful of countries, mostly European, where women make up 50 percent or more of ministerial positions, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN Women.
The shakeup is the latest in a series of dramatic reforms implemented by Abiy since he took office in April after more than two years of anti-government unrest that contributed to his predecessor's sudden resignation.
The prime minister's measures have included ending two decades of conflict with neighbouring Eritrea, releasing jailed dissidents, welcoming formerly banned groups back into the country and announcing plans to privatise major state-owned industries.
But since taking power, his government has been rocked by successive ethnic clashes in the countryside including violence in southern Ethiopia that has displaced nearly one million people.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/ethiopia-women-occupy-50-percent-cabinet-181016150026938.html
In Ethiopian leader’s new cabinet, half the ministers are women
Ethiopia's newly appointed ministers take their oath of office on Oct. 16, 2018, at the parliament in the capital Addis Ababa. (Stringer/AFP/Getty Images)
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Ethiopia’s reformist prime minister announced Tuesday a new cabinet that is half female, in an unprecedented push for gender parity in Africa’s second-most-populous nation. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has marked his nearly seven months in office with staggering reforms for this once-authoritarian country, notably releasing thousands of political prisoners, making peace with its main enemy, Eritrea, and promising to open up the economy.
The new cabinet, which reduces ministerial positions to 20 from 28, has women in the top security posts for the first time in Ethiopia’s history. Aisha Mohammed will be in charge of defense, and Muferiat Kamil, a former parliamentary speaker, will head the newly formed Ministry of Peace.
In some ways, this could be one of the most important ministries in the government, though its name has garnered a degree of criticism on social media for its Orwellian sound. It oversees the federal police, the intelligence services and the information security agency, and it will take the lead in tackling much of the ethnic unrest that has swept the countryside since Abiy’s reforms. “Our women ministers will disprove the adage that women can’t lead,” Abiy said in Parliament. Although women have been in the cabinet before, they often held minor positions. In the new cabinet, in addition to defense and security, women will head the ministries of trade, transport and labor, as well as culture, science and revenue.
Ethiopias newly appointed Minister of National Defence, Aisha Mohammed, arrives to take her oath of office on Oct. 16, 2018, at the parliament in the capital Addis Ababa. (Stringer/AFP/Getty Images)
Awol Allo, an expert on Ethiopia from Britain’s Keele University, said this was especially important because the lack of gender equality is a persistent problem in the country, which has strong patriarchal traditions. “It is a very important and progressive move on the part of the prime minister and very consistent with the transformative agendas he’s been pursuing,” he said. “I also think it sends a strong message to young Ethiopian women that one day they can take up positions in the government.”
Also represented in the new cabinet are often marginalized ethnic groups. A diverse nation of about 80 ethnicities, Ethiopia has long been dominated by just a few groups. Aisha, the new defense minister, comes from the arid and predominantly Muslim Afar region, while new Finance Minister Ahmed Shide is from the Somali region. Hallelujah Lulie, an analyst based in Addis Ababa, pointed out the presence in the cabinet of two Muslim women who wear headscarves, an important inclusion in a country that is one-third Muslim.
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