First Lady Margaret Kenyatta in Japan for World Assembly for Women

TOKYO, JAPAN: First Lady Margaret Kenyatta Friday joined top women leaders from the world during the opening of the World Assembly for Women (WAW,2015) conference, Tokyo, Japan.

The conference which is in its second year running was opened by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who is also the brain-child of the WAW movement.

Top women leaders at the conference and who were drawn from 140 countries and eight International Organizations included Mrs Akie Abe, the President of Liberia  Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Rula Ghani, the First Lady of Afghanistani and Cherie Blair, the founder of the Cherie Blair Foundation for women.

Others were Tina Tchen, the chief of staff to the First Lady of the United States , Hellen Clark, the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the Executive Director, UN-women.

Mr Shinzo said the aim of WAW is to promote the dynamic engagement of women in all spheres of society adding that  “Abeconomics” does not stop at the borders of Japan .

He said since he launched the WAW movement two years ago, Japanese men have started changing where large corporates have now started employing women in top  managerial positions to demonstrate the potential of women.

He said the circle of acceptance for women leaders and managers is expanding.

The theme of the WAW conference is: creating a society where women shine in Japan and the world.

Mr Shinzo said true reform will not happen anywhere in the world “ unless we have more women becoming leaders in their organizations, in addition to changes in men’s consciousness”.

The PM however regretted that despite Japan being a science and technology oriented country, it still faces the same problems  like in developing countries where women shy away from sciences and technical courses.

“We here companies say that even when they want to hire women, the number of female university students majoring in sciences is quite low to start with”, he said.

In honour of his proactive role to promote women in society, Mr. Shinzo was chosen by UN- women as one of the ten male heads of state and government to promote the dynamic engagement of women through top-down means.