BIC explores a culture of leadership during 65th session of the Commission on the Status of Women

BIC explores a culture of leadership during 65th session of the Commission on the Status of Women

Panelists at a BIC event at CSW65 on “Leadership for a Culture of Equality, in Times of Peril and Peace”
New York—19 March 2021

Yesterday, the Baha’i International Community (BIC) hosted a side event to the United Nations’s 65th session of the Commission on the Status of Women to explore the importance of increasing women’s participation in leadership roles and the affairs of society.

“Against the backdrop of a world significantly impacted by the global coronavirus pandemic, in addition to women and girls bearing the greatest impact of this health crisis, there is a growing recognition of the indispensable role that women in leadership play,” shared Saphira Rameshfar, Representative of the BIC to the UN, in her opening remarks. 

“Never has it been more clear how much humanity benefits when women’s leadership is embraced and promoted at every level of society.”

Through a series of roundtable interventions, the event expanded on concepts found in the BIC’s formal statement to the Commission, entitled, “Leadership for a Culture of Equality, in Times of Peril and Peace”, accompanied by a short video

In reflecting on the importance of women’s participation in public life and the significance of this moment in history, Carlos Infante, founder and CEO of the Movement Creating Citizens, based in Venezuela, commented, “Women are out there doing what anyone else is doing that is changing the world. The very example of that is CSW65, it’s this event…. Every single woman here has an opinion and she has shared her power, why are we not talking about that?”

Selin Özünaldım, a HeForShe Youth Advocate from Turkey, shared, “When women become leaders they bring skills, different perspectives, structural and cultural differences … and with extensive awareness women can investigate finer details to see what is going on underneath.”

Thando Gumede, a feminist lawyer from South Africa concurred, saying, “There are plenty of women who are perfectly qualified for positions and even more with great potential, and it’s our responsibility to find those people and to groom them.”

Among the other themes raised was the need to reevaluate models of leadership. “Every society needs all of its population in all its diversity to be a part of finding solutions and leadership,” shared Charlotte Bunch, Founding Director and Senior Scholar at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University. “If we delink power and hierarchy from leadership, we begin to see leadership as I think most women have exercised it—as consensus and building the capacity of the community.”

Panelists also explored ways to enable the full expression of women’s capabilities. “We need to start from the home, to the community, to the nation, and then globally,” shared Sudha Srivastava, President of the Young Members Network for Graduate Women International, based in the United Kingdom. “I believe that education is the best gift one can give to women and girls to enable them to reach the decision making roles.”

Almeera Khalid from Girls20 based in Canada also offered insights about the importance of capacity-building and role models to support the younger generation in navigating current power dynamics in leadership settings, commenting that, “Young women are going to play a key part in this systems-change.”

The Commission, taking place largely online this year in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, has allowed the BIC to field a diverse delegation incorporating members in locales ranging from Mexico and France—the two countries where the upcoming Generation Equality Forum will be hosted—as well as Australia, Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea, and Turkey, among others. 

The BIC-hosted side event, together with a screening of its recent film Glimpses into the Spirit of Gender Equality, were convened on the NGO Committee on the Status of Women’s civil society virtual platform. Ms. Rameshfar, who serves on the Executive Board and Global Planning Committee of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women to the United Nations, has been closely involved in the organization of this virtual civil society forum, held in parallel to the UN’s Commission. The virtual forum, which hosted over 25,000 participants, has been noted as “the largest gathering of feminists since the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995.”