 And thank you for making time to attend this presentation. Of course, I know the reason why you are here. I'm so brilliant. You just could not resist coming here to listen to me. And I appreciate that. I first would like to recognize the members of AWI, Association for the Advancement of African Women Economists. Ladies, could you? Yay. There's several of you. Thank you for coming. Oh, man. Okay, thank you. And my talk today is gonna be talking about the effect of role models and mentoring in reducing the gender gap. So role models, we all know what role models are. I'm gonna use this also as an opportunity to say thank you and then introduce three actually important mentors who have played a very significant effect and they've had a very profound effect on my career. And otherwise, personal life as well. Moabu, Professor Moabu. Of course, there is Steve, Professor O'Connor, and Anastasia. So those are my mentors, no role models, mentors. And I'm gonna tell you why it's very important, at least in the discipline that I'm in. So I'll be showing a bunch of graphs. Now, look at this graph very carefully. It looks at economic growth, income pay, capital growth, PPP in constant dollars over the past 20 years. So this is the average 1994 to 2014. It clearly shows that over this 20-year period, almost all countries, developing countries, experience a significant increase in economic growth. If you take sub-Saharan Africa, the graph kind of is due us because of the numbers, right? Increase for sub-Saharan Africa was about 70%. Latin America was smaller, about 36 also. The Mina region, Middle Eastern, North Africa, about 106%. So then two, an important question that comes to bear is this. And as you know, the buzz word now for the international community, academics, policymakers is inclusiveness has growth been inclusive. The theme for the African Development Report, which is produced by African Development Bank is inclusive growth. ECA, Economic Commission of Africa, the UN in Addis, inclusive growth. So that seems to be the story, right? And inclusiveness, we can look at it as a very broad, think about it very broadly, but the focus has been on gender. Now it's gender, gender, gender, inclusive growth, inclusiveness, inclusiveness, right? So socioeconomic inclusiveness, political inclusiveness and economic inclusiveness, right? So this is the UN, UN Women, and you go to the website, it's very prominent. There you go. This is African Development Bank, right? See an Africa where, so let's guess I have to read. So this is a dream. See an Africa where African economic women participate fully in decision making, an Africa where women have easy access to knowledge because it has been brought closer to them. Where women's skills are optimized and women's capacity is tabbed to engage in great economic opportunities. Unless Africa invests heavily in gender equality, it will neither sustain its growth nor meet its development goals, period. Now the international community has moved on from MDG, 2015 we are done. Now we've gone to what sustainable development goals. The question is the growth that has been observed in the past 20 years, is it sustainable? There's been some research done on that and it's the only way to have sustainable growth is to break up, but still eliminate this gender gap. So again, this is from the UN Sustainable Development Goal which was recently adopted. I think it's September, we are still in September, yeah, so. Women and girls might enjoy equal access to quality education, economic resources and political participation, right? Employment and leadership, this is my favorite part, leadership and decision making at all levels. And what does that mean? You cannot have leadership and decision making without higher education. We need to go beyond primary education. That is not enough. And even secondary education is not enough, tertiary. So the question is, how do we ensure that women have socioeconomic inclusion, right? So we're looking at a growth scenario where women are contributors as well as beneficiaries of growth and development. So socioeconomic inclusion includes access to finance, employment, healthcare access, utilization of ICTs and political inclusion. We need women to be engaged in decision making units. In my view, the answer is education, education, education. And it's higher education. Education reduces the socioeconomic and political gender gap, right? And so the MDGs, the emphasis on primary education was on primary education. Many, many countries, in particular African countries have achieved the gender parity. We need to go beyond that. And I'm gonna provide some reasons why that is the case. Now, more quotes. So this is different. Yeah, forget the international community. Educated women tend to be better nourished, marry later, have fewer healthier, better nourished children who themselves go to school. And we all know this, but it's comforting to know, to know that deaf faith and other international agencies are embracing this concept. USAID, Steve. So this is from USAID website. Global girls are especially disadvantaged by poor in quality education. Yet we know that when girls are educated, their families are healthier. They have fewer children, they get married later, and they have more opportunities to generate income. Again, that's a small and primary education. It's more than having a higher or lower illiteracy rate. Okay, now let's go UNESCO. The point I'm gonna make here is that going back to the question, how do we ensure that we have more women setting up the table, making decisions, right? And influencing policy. And that I make this argument that there is a shortage of women. So that's the baseline. That's where we are starting from, okay? Where are the missing women? We want 50% of political appointees to be women. Of course you want well-qualified women because they'll be making decisions for the country. Where are we? We cannot find them. So given where we are, and if you all agree that secondary and tertiary education is crucial, how do we achieve this goal and break that gap quickly? We cannot afford to wait. So my answer, and I'm gonna show some evidence to support that is mentoring and role model. I'll start with the role model effect. How does it work? It's very intuitive. Ah, you see that lady, she looks like me. And I tell them, you know what? 30 years ago, I lived in this village, same school. Look at me. I did it, you can do it too. That is the role model effect. The mentoring effect is taking someone under your wing, encouraging them to reach their highest potential. Importantly, especially in the professional arena, talking to them about the unwritten rules in the profession. So in that sense, I have been very lucky to have these gentlemen as mentors. And I'm gonna tell you why, in my profession, you have to rely on men to be mentors. And that is fine. And the importance of mentoring, let's look at this statement, this is from UNESCO website, a role model. A female role model can support and encourage girls to successfully complete their studies and maybe even continue studying to be teachers themselves. So you're talking about teachers as role models. And I'm gonna provide some evidence. I'm doing some research on that and I'm gonna show you some very nice graphs to support the statement. She can also be there to listen to any problems and generate guidance when necessary. You will not believe the number of phone calls I made to Steve. He didn't matter at the time. I just picked up the phone and called. And next week, I have every day to an email from Elizabeth to call me a door. In schools where girls sign the minority, especially the presence of one or more female teacher may also ensure protection for girls from unwanted attention from boys or male teachers and even from sexual abuse and exploitation. So you have the mentoring effect and then also the role model effect. Now, the first female president of Liberia. I like the last part of this table. I'll be happy to serve as a role model. And Trill Blazer, I love that. For those who will come after me, you listen to her, you look at her. I think you're president too. Now that's my dream for Ghana, I'm Ghanaian. Now one more statement. So this is Helen Clark, former president of New Zealand. Women leaders can play an important role through the demonstration effect. What is the demonstration effect? Again, being effective leaders is the role model effect. So, as I said, I'm gonna show you some graphs. And economists love numbers, so I'm not gonna end my talk without talking about numbers, right? So I'm looking at the role model effect and asking the question, why doesn't it make a difference, right? When you have more women as teachers. So this is what we're developing countries, where I plot the share of female teachers and look at the repetition rate. So you can look at it as school performance, right? And you can see it's negatively correlated, right? So this is for 104 developed, 85 developing countries. Okay, of course it's Sub-Saharan Africa, I had to throw that in since I'm African. And then this is for males, right? So from here, one can conclude that women are just better teachers. Which is true because they have a positive impact on performance, so why is the role model effect coming from, right? So I have a regression and I use a GMM and all that stuff I'm donating all that stuff controlled for. And this is the estimated impact on this one standard deviation increase, right? For males and females. It's like night and day, both short run and long run. It's much higher, significantly higher for females than males. That captures the role model effect. Now this is secondary education. Now let's look at tertiary education. So I have just five minutes. We're gonna focus on economics. Most of you here are economists, right? So the economics profession is very unkind to women. In the US, the data shows that you have more female chemists in chemistry and environmental science than in economics. And so in 1973, the Mechanical Economic Association formed CISWEP, which is a women's organization. The Canadians followed suit in 1990, the UK in 1996, and then Australia in 2002. So they are all designed developed countries. And then China, 2003. So China was the first developing country. And hey, are we? The last is 2012, the most recent. And an important difference between are we and the others is that all these countries specific are we encompassed the whole of Africa? Two minutes, there you go. So for what do these women's associations do? They focus on mentoring. They have mentoring workshops and they have, so mentoring and the mentors are both mostly women and that they also serve as role models. That is what are we is about. In our profession, we do recognize that. And so in terms of policy, right? It's for policymakers and the international community to spend or start thinking about such programs and sponsoring such programs. Let me use the last minute. I have to do some, a little bit of self promotion. So this is are we. If you don't have a brochure, please read it. And Tattenda is here. And a journal, those of you who work in Africa, please submit your papers to Journal of African Development. And the last is, this is the publication, the winter issue, 2015 issue for the American Economic Association, the Women's Organization. And the focus was on associations of women economics around the group. So all the sex associations were featured and are we is on page four. So this is very important, at least in the economics profession. And we have copies out here. And please join are we. We need role models and mentors. So that means men can also join. Thank you.