Take Five: Women peacekeepers are role models for women and girls in the local community

Date: Thursday, May 28, 2020

Lt. Colonel Ratih Pusparini is one of the first Indonesian women to have been dispatched in a peacekeeping mission. From 2008–2013, she served as a military observer and in various positions on UN peacekeeping missions in the Congo, Lebanon and Syria.

Ending sexual bribery and empowering widows in Sri Lanka to bring peace to their communities

Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Sharmila* was 25 years old when her husband was abducted by an armed group. Despite several of her neighbors witnessing the abduction, Sharmila was not able to find her husband or receive help from authorities.

Take five: “We should have zero tolerance for sexual bribery.”

Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Shyamala Gomez is the Executive Director of the Centre for Equality and Justice (CEJ) in Colombo, Sri Lanka. CEJ supports war affected women from Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim backgrounds to advocate for their rights and for transitional justice and reconciliation in their communities.

China’s companies recommit to helping female workers amid the COVID-19 crisis

Date: Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Beijing, China -- Thirty-seven Chinese companies joining a discussion hosted by UN Women underlined the importance of empowering women as businesses face the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis.

Experts discuss the gendered impact of COVID-19 in Bangladesh

Date: Sunday, May 24, 2020

Around 150 people from diverse background attended a virtual discussion on Gendered Impacts of COVID-19 organized by UN Women on 19 May 2020.

With savvy honed in UN Women’s WeLearn training, female entrepreneurs in Indonesia keep their businesses afloat

Date: Friday, May 15, 2020

Jakarta, Indonesia -- The commercial shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic has hit Indonesia’s smaller businesses especially hard. But some female entrepreneurs have survived -- and even prospered -- by using the savvy and skills they learned in a UN Women entrepreneurship training. Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) depend on daily cash flow from sales of goods, but social distancing edicts in cities including Jakarta have forced owners to close up shops. The Ministry of...

From where I stand: During the COVID-19 pandemic, “I may not be physically present, but I want to still be there to give mental and emotional support.”

Date: Thursday, May 14, 2020

Ni Ketut Rediten, widely known as Desi, is a counsellor and advocate for people living with HIV. She works for the Provincial Health Office and is stationed at Voluntary Counselling and Testing Services on HIV/AIDS, in Sanglah public hospital in Bali, Indonesia. She was interviewed on April 16.

Take five: “Women are often an after-thought in a humanitarian crisis”

Date: Thursday, May 14, 2020

Ms. Bina Pradhan is an independent researcher, focusing on gender, macroeconomics and emerging issues of inequality, affiliated to Federation of Business and Professional Women, Nepal (FBPWN). She has been working on promotion and advancement of women in enterprise development and trade, post-earthquake community reconstruction, and rebuilding people’s lives and livelihoods with a focus on sustainability. In this interview, Ms. Pradhan shares her views on the socio-economic...

Take Five: “People in certain sections of the society … continue to have repressive mindsets”

Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Ashishkumar Chauhan is Managing Director and CEO of Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), Asia’s oldest exchange and the world’s largest exchange, with 5,000-plus listed companies. He is credited with reviving the exchange and completing its initial public offering, which was oversubscribed more than 51 times. On International Women’s Day on March 8, Bombay Stock Exchange signed the Women’s Empowerment Principles which UN Women and United Nations Global Compact developed to guide businesses on improving the situation of women in the workplace. He was interviewed by email.

Women entrepreneurs improve their digital skills to recover from the COVID-19 crisis in China

Date: Monday, May 11, 2020

138 women entrepreneurs and senior managers learned about the digitization of human resources and business digital transformation as potential strategies to counter the post-COVID-19 crisis, from a webinar series led by UN Women China.