Julieth Lamosai – Tanzania

In 2013 when her company started enforcing the Gender Policy it had developed the year prior with the assistance of Gender Links, Julieth Lamosai found herself inheriting the task of seeing if the policy worked. As the human resource manager, she was chosen to be the Gender Champion in the company, a position she is executing very well if what she has done so far is anything to go by.

“When I started focusing, in a deeper way, on gender issues, I realized that women were marginalised, especially in the leadership positions. This led me to investigate why, and I realised one of the things that many women lacked, and which was used to promote male counterparts, was education credentials.”

Lamosai says she had to enroll into college to get her bachelors degree. Now she has a masters degree in human resource management. The acquisition of these academic credentials has seen her rise through the ranks, from a cashier, to a supervisor and finally to her current position. “With my qualifications, I am able to articulate the issues in the Gender Policy, serving as example of the contribution women can make to leadership if given the opportunity to lead.”

She says some of the provisions in the Gender Policy can only be attained if women in the media are united, have academic credentials, and have gender sensitive people leading influential departments. The Gender Policy is a tool she constantly relies on to enforce certain decisions. “It is the Gender Policy that has made the number of female editors rise from one to three. We now have more than two women as Bureau Chiefs.”

As human resource manager, Lamosai says she does her part to ensure that promotion and recruitment process have a strong gender dimension. She has become a pillar for many female employees especially during trying moments. “As a woman I understand what fellow women are going through, when they come to me as the person in-charge of payments asking for a salary advance, I immediately effect their request to help them meet their needs.”

She has also spearheaded the formation of a forum where female employees in the company meet once a month to share experiences and the challenges they are facing in the company. The forum is also used sensitize them on the Gender Policy and supporting career development. One of the outcomes of these discussions on education is that four female journalists have now enrolled and are pursuing degree courses and one diploma course. Lamosai says, “During this forum I introduced Gender Links to the women employees, and how they can learn a lot about women’s empowerment by visiting the organization’s website.”

Other issues discussed at the forum include women’s role in the society; education as a pathway to leadership; performance and promotion at work and the importance of self-esteem. Lamosai wants the number of women in management to increase to 15 percent by 2015. She believes that because her bosses are very supportive of the Gender Policy and listens to what she says, this is an achievable target.