Letty Chiwara

Letty Chiwara is the UN Women Representative to Ethiopia, the Africa Union Commission and the UN Economic Commission for Africa, a post she took up in May 2013. Prior to this, she was the UNIFEM and the UN Women Chief of Africa, based in New York, where she worked for 12 years. Letty successfully led UN Women’s strategic partnerships with several organizations including the European Commission, the World Bank, the OECD DAG Gender Net, FEMNET, YWCA, the Africa Union Commission, the UNECA, and the Africa Development Bank.   

A gender expert and women’s rights activist of regional and global acclaim, Letty’s 22 years of work with the UN has seen her participate in and substantively contribute to several inter-governmental negotiations including the UN General Assembly, the Africa Union Summits, Global Financing for Development and Aid Effectiveness Conferences, Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and many more. Her passion and commitment to women’s rights have seen her leading the establishment of key networks including FemWise (Africa Women Mediators Network), AWLN (Africa Women Leaders Network), AGDEN (Africa Gender and Development Evaluators Network), GIMAC (Gender is my Agenda Campaign), among others. She led the Africa Unite Campaign to end Violence Against Women and Girls (2010–2015) and is currently leading the team developing the Africa Regional Spotlight Initiative on ending Harmful and Traditional Practices and ending child marriage. In her formative career years, Letty served her own country of Zimbabwe working as a Town Planning Officer in Matabeleland South and in Harare.

Letty has authored several publications and is currently co-authoring a Book on “Culture, Gender and African Women’s Leadership”. Letty has been a Board Member of a number of organizations including Shelter Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe Women Resource Center and Network. You can follow Letty on @ChiwaraLetty.

Letty Chiwara was profiled for ATLAS by Angela Mudukuti. Learn more about Angela's work at the end of this profile and follow her @AngelaMudukuti.

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What pulled you into a career in women’s rights and women’s empowerment and what were your first steps? 

My family upbringing and background had everything to do with this. I grew up in a house of 8 children: 5 girls and 3 boys. We had a father who always treated us equally despite living in a rural community where, very often, only boys were given access to education and enjoyed preferential treatment. Both my rural parents did not believe in a division between the boys and girls. We were all allowed to live our dreams. I went to boarding school, an expensive Catholic boarding school at the time, where I got a very good education that formed a solid foundation for the career that was to come. I never realised how it would influence my future and lead me to my passion for gender issues.

I started out in government as a town planner and I did this for four years. Whilst I was in this position, I was fortunate enough to get a British Council scholarship do my Masters in Urban Development Planning at the University of London in the United Kingdom. One of my courses was on gender. It really opened up my eyes to the world I came from and made me realise that there was and still is a lot of inequality in the world. I knew that something had to be done. 

We had a lecturer by the name of Caroline Mossa, who was a leading expert on gender issues and feminism. When she spoke to us I realised that there were so few “Caroline Mossa"s at the time, in the early 90s. I decided that I had to be a part of this movement to change norms and change cultural and traditional practices that hold women and girls back.  

The conditions of my scholarship meant that I had to come back and serve my country for two years, which I did. But after that I realised that I could not stay in that job. I desperately wanted to follow my heart and work on gender issues. In 1996, I took the bold step to resign from my very comfortable government job without having secured another job. Thankfully, I had a very supportive husband who provided for us both whilst I looked for work in the gender field. Eight months later I was offered a consultancy with the former UNIFEM in Harare. It was a short-term assignment which entailed bringing women from across the Sothern Africa Development Community (SADC) Region to a Trade Fair in Harare, Zimbabwe, and that was where it all started. Here I am 23 years later, leading UN Women’s work in Ethiopia and at the continental level working closely with the Africa Union Commission and UN Economic Commission for Africa.

What are some of the highlights of your career to date?

There are many highlights, all at different levels. The first would be having a UN career for almost 23 years, having come from humble beginnings. I have a friend who often says, “You rural girl, from the rural Gutu have become this woman we see all over TV!”  I went from covering women’s issues in the SADC Region, to moving to New York to cover Africa, then moving globally to cover global UNIFEM and UN Women’s programmes and now back to Africa to cover the African Union, Ethiopia and UN Economic Commission for Africa. Looking back at my trajectory over more than two decades is a highlight for me.

Another highlight has been seeing the progression and transformation in so many rural women and men that I have worked with in places such as Zimbabwe. For example, in a rural village called Mutoko in Zimbabwe we were engaged in economic empowerment in relation to the impact of HIV/AIDS, which at the time was quite a taboo topic. Each time I went to visit those communities, I witnessed the women light up and saw how the men had learned to support the women in household chores and their income-generating project was life-changing. I say life-changing because it was not something I had grown up seeing in my rural home Gutu. Making that difference at the community and family level was simply amazing. Today that project still exists. In fact, years later when I moved to New York, I was able to bring a young man who left his stable job as a teacher to be the coordinator of the project to speak to a global audience in New York and tell them about this project and about how it had personally changed the gender roles within his own family. He not only had a memorable time but what he shared really impressed everybody.   

Other highlights include leading a global movement of women (and men who supported us, of course) to ensure the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness was not gender blind. The global community came together in 2005 and agreed on principles governing the delivery of aid from the global north to the global south. The compact, in its form at the time, did not acknowledge that women’s organisations would suffer. I led a global advocacy movement to make sure that the implementation, monitoring, and reporting on the Paris Declaration was gender responsive and that  aid delivered for women as well. I am proud of the role I played in having the Paris-based OECD DAC endorse an indicator to measure the amount of resources that are being invested in gender equality and women’s empowerment by all donors. This indicator is used by donors all over the world today.

Some of the examples you have mentioned have included the role played by men but how have you managed to make men part of the discussion on women’s empowerment?

Interesting question! I came to Ethiopia in 2013 at a time when women’s leadership was not at all in the spotlight. Ethiopia was very male-dominated, making it difficult to change the gender roles and ensure that both men and women realise and play a critical part in the development of their country and indeed their families. Today, Ethiopia celebrates 50/50 representation in is cabinet and women’s leadership is high on the agenda. 

I came in as the first UN Women’s representative to the country and we started what I called, “community conversations”. This was a strategy I brought to my office where I insisted that all teams (we have different teams e.g. teams for ending violence against women, teams on elections and governance, etc) have to go into the community and start by talking to everybody. Do not just walk into the community and say, “we are here to talk to the women” and then take all the women to sit under a tree. I told them that if we start that way we will not get anywhere! 

You have to make sure men are part of the initial conversation and get them to support the women. I told the teams that for any project in any area, be it urban or rural, you must start with community conversations including the men. Especially because in many of those communities the traditional and religious leaders are men. I told them to make sure they bring in the women, the children, and the men. Let them speak and then redesign your strategic response. By the time you go back to implement your plan you already have the community on board. This has really helped, for example, in Ethiopia where we have a Rural Women Economic Empowerment Programme in which we work with women and some men in agriculture-related endeavours. Owing to the approach I mentioned we saw that the men who normally would not “let” their women go out to do community or cooperative farming work, were now comfortable to support their involvement. 

Not only that but they also accompanied them. Not to take over, but to support. There is one story I will never forget: there was a man who used to take his wife on his bike to the cooperative because he was afraid of her walking alone on unsafe roads for long distances. He would take her there and leave her do her work and then he would take her home again. This particular woman spoke to me about how his support had really empowered her and she, in turn, has become a leader after being elected to serve on the Local Council in her village. 

She is a role model for me and I knew I had to take her to New York to share her story during a Commission on the Status of Women which focussed on Rural Women in 2017. She had no birth certificate, no passport, and had never travelled outside her country. As UN Women we helped her obtain all those documents and took her to New York. Her husband also accompanied her to the airport and I met him there. He was filled with gratitude as he told me about how empowered his wife had become. He was not even worried about her travelling to a place as far away as New York. He was more than confident that she would be fine.  

These are some small examples but they show the difference you can make in people’s lives. It is also a powerful reminder that transforming societies takes time and can be arduous and painful because you do not always see immediate results. But I take comfort in knowing that making a difference in one woman’s life, per day, is good enough. That “one” woman will also impact other women in one way or another.

You mentioned that it can be arduous and painful. What are some of the challenges you have faced and how have you overcome them?

There are many. When trying to change what society believes to be the norm, you always get resistance. In all of the examples I have mentioned there was resistance, not just from men but unfortunately from women as well. Grappling with how to overcome the resistance and still managing to make your point understood is hard. 

I have learnt that patience is vital, as is learning to listen. Developing an understanding of what is at the heart of the resistance has also been of great use to me. Put yourself in their shoes and try and understand. Make them feel heard and acknowledged but ask them how they would feel if they were in the shoes of the disempowered and disenfranchised.

It is significantly more difficult when women are resisting change. During the 2015 Ethiopia Demographic Health Survey (EDHS) UN Women was able to include a module on Violence Against Women in the survey tools and questions. The survey asked how women feel about domestic violence, at the hands of their husbands. Surprisingly and disappointingly for us was the fact that 64 percent of the women believed it was alright for their husbands to beat them. You can imagine the resistance when you start talking about ending violence against women to such women – the majority of the population! Through various campaigns and advocacy and indeed the community conversations which we continue to use, we are seeing some progress. Women are now speaking up about domestic violence and even reporting it.

Another challenge I have faced is dealing with some male peers, colleagues, supervisors and leaders from governments who just look at you as the one who is only here to talk about women’s issues. They behave as if you cannot possibly add value in any other way or on any other subject. They just say, “now here she comes again with her women’s issues.” They can be dismissive and condescending. I had to identify a way to change this attitude.

When I arrived in Ethiopia in 2013, I was the only female Head of Agency out of 26 agencies for two years. The other Heads were men who only saw me as the “gender person”. I developed a strategy. In meetings where the discussions were about economics, security, peace-building, finances etc, I decided that every time I put my hand up I would begin my intervention with informed comments relating to the core subject of the meeting and then right at the end I would add the substantive gender issues as well. This was to show them that I know just as much as they do on various issues and that my expertise is not limited to gender issues. 

The key for me was having substantive knowledge and experiences in whatever subject was being discussed. That was the only way I could be heard. In the end they respected me. The Resident Coordinator and then Chief of the UN in Ethiopia appreciated my expertise so much that despite the fact that I represented the smallest UN agency, he appointed me Officer-in-Charge when he was away. Under normal circumstances that would never happen.

Working in women-dominated organisation brings its own challenges. There is an assumption that we are all in this together and that we all believe in women’s rights and equality but, some women are not there for that. They are there to advance their careers at all costs which may also mean pulling others down. It can be difficult when you think you are allies but then you realise that some people do not care about the cause. I am yet to figure out how to overcome this problem.

In many international spaces women from the global south are underrepresented. How can we make sure that they also get a seat at the table?

Yes this is true, statistics prove this. Global organisations exist due to major funding from the global north and this funding comes with conditions, including that people who work at these organisations should be nationals of the relevant donor countries. I have witnessed it myself. During the UNIFEM times and when I was in a meeting in New York with one of the donor countries they said, “we are one of your biggest donors and for us to continue funding UNIFEM, you have to hire our candidate for this D1 post.” He then proceeded to pull out the candidate’s CV, which he happened to be carrying around and put it on the table for my Executive Director. I was shocked and so were all my colleagues in that room.

Unfortunately, money is a major determining factor. Governments from the global south have a voice and do indeed influence global development policy and agendas, but they do not have a footprint in the financial game. It is all about the politics of money. The politics of money determines who gets what in the end. This world is just unfair that way. 

When they say “pay to play” they mean it. You literally have to pay to play. Many governments from the global south do not fund or invest in these institutions in the same way. It is a very difficult situation to overcome. The only advice I have is that as individuals and as women, we need to support each other and open doors for others. We cannot rely on our governments to do this for us. 

Do you have any advice for women aspiring to be where you are?

Believe in yourself! Go for it!  Let nobody and nothing hold you back. I have always believed that knowledge is power so make sure you immerse yourself in your field of interest and prove that you are capable. Know your subject and run with it! 

Ms. Chiwara was profiled for ATLAS by Angela Mudukuti. Angela is a Zimbabwean lawyer currently with the Wayamo Foundation, where she focuses on capacity building for African prosecutors and investigators to further enhance domestic capacity to investigate and prosecute core international crimes. Formerly with the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC), Angela worked on precedent-setting cases on crimes against humanity and universal jurisdiction brought before the South African Constitutional Court, and was deeply involved in advocacy and strategic litigation, including seeking the arrest of President Bashir (Sudan) during his visit to South Africa. Prior to joining SALC, Angela worked for the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, and under the supervision of Prof Cherif Bassiouni at the International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights in Siracusa, Italy. Prior to that, Angela was in private practice in Zimbabwe working on civil and criminal matters. Angela has an LLM in international criminal law and transitional justice and an undergraduate law degree. Angela has written and published on international criminal law issues in books and newspapers. @AngelaMudukuti