Women in Leadership
Women Leaders Make a Difference.
Women’s leadership and political participation
UNWWO dedicated Women Lead Change to empower the development, advancement and promotion of women, their organizations, and to impacting the economy and future workforce.
WWO accelerate women’s full and effective participation in leadership at all levels of decision-making in economic and public life, particularly in the fields of health, education, and economics. WWO empower mid-career women to reach the highest leadership positions in health, education, and economics.
WWO focus on three areas of opportunity, investing in and supporting individual empowerment, organizational change, and societal impact to enable pathways for women’s leadership, power, and influence. This means investing in women, identifying and addressing longstanding barriers and gaps in research about pathways for women to attain leadership roles, and supporting policymaking that enables equitable, sustainable pathways to leadership.
WWO’s work is supported and guided by research to identify the root causes of underrepresentation and attrition and best practices and effective interventions at multiple points along the leadership pathway. This data helps us and our partners better understand what works to advance, retain, and empower women leaders.
Areas of focus
The Women in Leadership team focuses on three areas of opportunity: individual empowerment, organizational change, and societal impact. These are mutually reinforcing—progress in one area requires progress in the others. Our strategy is designed to allow us, along with our partners, to consider and support this work as a whole:
Individual empowerment
When women have equitable access to training, role models, networking, and other tools that have traditionally been designed for men, they have the opportunity to accelerate their careers and promote organizational change from the inside.
Organizational change
When organizations enable equitable paths to leadership, their example and their strategies allow other organizations and entire sectors to do the same.
Societal impact
When women are visible in positions of leadership, it changes the very nature of what effective leadership looks like—and begins chipping away at deeply rooted stereotypes and biases.
By investing in these areas, we aim to create the conditions for a virtuous cycle of women’s leadership, power, and influence in fields that directly support global health and development goals. When women’s access to leadership roles and decision-making power increases, their lives improve, the communities around them improve, and all of society benefits.