‘One Tree Cannot Make a Forest’: A Story Of a Woman’s Goal To Abolish the Stigma Against Women in Leadership.

Written by Nabieu Senesie and Mariama Braima

Sao Musa is a 45-years-old woman and a Community Action volunteer in Kigbai community, East Sierra Leone. Before OneVillage Partners' relationship with the community, male leaders were the only decision-makers for development planning causing widespread disunity amongst community memebers. Men as leaders largely excluded women from attending community meetings, and decision-making processes, which forced the women to take the back seat. Women became dependent on men and were largely discriminated against, which made them less confident to use their voices. Before this time, only two women were in leadership positions, but their opinions were never considered. ­­­"Women are women in every circumstance," Sao stated, which means women are inferior to men. Men used this adage frequently. 

OneVillage Partners began work in Kigbai in 2016. The model of OneVillage Partners encourages equal participation in all aspects of the community; meaning, all OneVillage Partners activities inspires gender equality.  The Nurturing Opportunities for Women (NOW) program is a six-month training for adult women on financial planning and decision-making and it makes provisions for participants to invite their husbands to one of the sessions called "the Family Session."  In this session, the participants and their husbands are involved in a “gender bender” activity where people critically think about their gender’s roles and responsibilities in the home and the community. Because few of the husbands invited to the family sessions were leaders, it triggered many discussions on the importance of women in community development. This started to change the mindset of the leaders concerning women’s potential based on their traditional perspectives.

The attitude of leaders towards women started changing too. As leaders began to realize the powerful influence of women in community development, they went to the drawing board to restructure their leadership styles. With improved knowledge on the importance of involving women in decision-making, the leaders wasted no time but started involving women in all decision-making seeking their consent before making critical community decisions. Many women felt appreciated for using their voices. This paved the way for inclusive leadership, as 3 additional women were given new leadership roles.

Although leaders realized that involving women in decision-making and development planning is good for the progress of their community, there were challenges on the sides of both parties: Women still feared to participate fully in decision-making processes, considering the previous traditional norms and seeing it as works only for the men. In addition, some leaders were still skeptical about women's ability to make meaningful contributions in decision-making for development. However, the leaders stood firm and continued to encourage women to participate fully in all community undertakings. It was a proactive mechanism to abolish the stigma against women. I now understand that "one tree cannot make a forest" Sao said.

Leaders and women successfully worked together to put into practice the new idea of involving everyone in decision-making and development planning. As more women gained leadership positions in the community, women are now confident to use their voices.

Finally, women's participation has increased, and they have gained respect from their male counterparts. Leaders now feel confident to appoint women to attend important meetings outside the community.  In the community, men see women as partners in development as opposed to them been viewed as inferior people. "A female hen cannot crow" was a proverb popularly used by men to describe the ability of women for being less fit for leadership. Even though this belief used to be popular, the intervention of OneVillage Partners has completely changed the mindset of people in Kigbai. "Women are the front drivers for our community's development", Sao concluded.