17 Nov 2024

Women in leadership positions should not suppress their femininity as the society needs their feminine traits.

President Advocate Duma Boko said this on Friday after announcing the last batch of his cabinet ministers, in which all women from the ruling party and those specially elected as Members of Parliament made it to the cabinet as three ministers, an assistant minister and a deputy speaker of the National Assembly.

He said women were by nature compassionate, caring and understanding, yet they faced peculiar challenges to ascend to positions of power.

Such, he said, was because the standard for success was almost decidedly male, adding that attributes for success in the corporate sector were constructed around male attributes of aggression among others.

“Society yearns for a different set of attributes to balance out these male leaders,” President Boko said.

He said because of the projected male standard, women find themselves expected to behave like males and model attributes they did not have and should not have in order to compete.

The President said in the process, the society had been deprived of the feminine attributes which were much needed by the humanity. He said there was no need for women to try and outcompete men but they should present values and attributes that the society so need, such as being compassionate, being a place of refuge for every citizen who felt aggrieved, violated or undermined.

“If there is anybody to whom a person should go expecting understanding and indeed get that empathy and understanding from, it is to a female leader more than any other,” he said.

President Boko said such traits came naturally upon women hence they ought to model and express such.

Therefore, he said the traits of femininity were needed in the leadership to balance male.

Meanwhile, females who made it to cabinet are Ms Bogolo Kenewendo as the Minister of Minerals and Energy, Dr Nono Kgafela-Mokoka as the Minister of Child Welfare and Basic Education, Ms Lesego Chombo as the Minister of Youth and Gender Affairs and Ms Maipelo Mophuting as the Assistant Minister for State President

In addition, Mmopane-Metsimotlhabe MP, Ms Helen Manyeneng has been elected the deputy speaker of the National Assembly. ENDS