Celebrating Women Making History so far in 2022

Role models are recognized as crucial to helping the world overcome gender bias and achieve gender equality: if women can see themselves represented, they can do it. A role model is other-focused as opposed to self-focused as they are usually active in their communities, freely giving of their time and talents to benefit people.

Role models are highly important for us psychologically, helping to guide us through life during our development, to make important decisions that affect the outcome of our lives, and to help us find happiness in later life.

Positive female role models have a magnified impact on women relative to male role models for men. These leaders demonstrate human capability, awakening in us a drive to change situations we once believed to be permanent. There are quite a few extraordinary men and women to look up to, but female role models are in no way exclusive to a female following.

Here are just a few of the women who have made history so far in 2022, as listed by The World Economic Forum:

JANUARY 2022

Maya Angelou

The late American author and activist Maya Angelou became the first Black woman to appear on the US quarter when the US Mint started rolling out the coin on 11 January. The coin is part of the American Women’s Quarters Program, which also includes Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American Hollywood movie star, the US Mint told Reuters.

Antonette Wemyss Gorman

Appointed in January 2022 as the first woman to run Jamaica’s military, Rear Admiral Antonette Wemyss Gorman has faced down danger and sexism in her 29-year career but hasn’t let gender hold her back. “I was never focused on the fact that I was a woman,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “I think a lot of times women make a mistake of focusing on their gender and cause their own limits in what they are doing.”

Xiomara Castro

Xiomara Castro was Sworn in as Honduras’s first woman president at the end of January 2022 in front of a cheering crowd that included Kamala Harris, US Vice President. Harris pledged US government support to Stem Migration and fight corruption in Central America.

Preet Chandi

When British Army Officer Preet Chandi set off on her solo expedition to the South Pole, she did it to inspire her eight-year-old niece.

“I want her to grow up without boundaries, knowing the possibilities of what you can achieve in life are endless. This journey aims to inspire future generations in achieving whatever they desire and pushing boundaries. By promoting and completing this challenge, it allows me to act as a role model to young people, women and those from ethnic backgrounds.”

Chandi is thought to be the first woman of color to complete the journey unsupported.

Ayesha Malik

Justice Ayesha Malik was appointed Pakistan’s first female Supreme Court judge in January. “An important and defining moment in our country as a brilliant lawyer and decorated judge has become Pakistan’s first female SC judge,” tweeted Maleeka Bokhari, Parliamentary secretary for law and a legislator of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party. “To shattering glass ceilings,” she added.

FEBRUARY 2022

Hannah Green

Australian Hannah Green became the first woman to win a mixed-gender professional golf tournament, at the TPS Murray River event in her home country. The former Women’s PGA Championship winner battled through gusty conditions to record a five-under-par final round of 66 and break a four-way tie with Andrew Evans, Matthew Millar and Blake Collyer.

Jane Campion

New Zealand film director Jane Campion became the first woman to receive multiple Oscar nominations for best director when she was nominated for The Power of the Dog in February. It comes almost 20 years after she was nominated in 1993 for The Piano. In the history of the Oscars, only seven women have been nominated for best director and only two have won: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2010 and Chloé Zhao for Nomadland in 2021.

Chloe Kim

At the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, Californian Chloe Kim became the first woman to win back-to-back golds in the Olympic snowboard halfpipe.

Ketanji Brown Jackson

Federal appellate judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was nominated by President Joe Biden to become the first Black woman to serve on the US Supreme Court. Her nomination on 25 February fulfilled a campaign promise Biden made exactly two years earlier to deliver the historic appointment. He said: “For too long, our government, our courts haven’t looked like America.

“I believe it’s time that we have a court that reflects the full talents and greatness of our nation with a nominee of extraordinary qualifications.”

Hearings on Jackson are set to begin on 21 March, in a first step before she can be voted on by the full chamber.

The World Economic Forum has been measuring gender gaps since 2006 in the annual Global Gender Gap Report.

The Global Gender Gap Report tracks progress towards closing gender gaps on a national level. To turn these Insights into concrete action and national progress, we have developed the Closing the Gender Gap Accelerators model for public private Collaboration. Report 2021

As per the Global Gender Gap Report 2021, the sectors where women are underrepresented even today would face difficulty in terms of gender parity in jobs in future.

These sectors are:

Cloud Computing – 14 percent of the total workforce is women.

Engineering – 20 percent of the total workforce is women.

These accelerators have been convened in ten countries across three regions. Accelerators are established in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, and Panama in partnership with the InterAmerican Development Bank in Latin America and the Caribbean, Egypt and Jordan in the Middle East and North Africa, and Kazakhstan in Central Asia.

All Country Accelerators, along with Knowledge Partner countries demonstrating global leadership in closing gender gaps, are part of a wider Ecosystem, the Global Learning Network, that facilitates the exchange of Insights and experiences through the Forum’s platform. Global Agenda here.