Future Women Leaders
Reflect on Shared Experience
For four days this week,
women from 50 schools in 17 countries around the globe
converged on the Smith and Mount Holyoke college campuses
to exchange ideas about how to facilitate and promote women’s leadership and positive involvement
in world events, as well as how to advance women’s
education.
The , June 10-13,
invited women from the United States, Australia, Africa,
the middle and far east, western and eastern Europe to
participate in a packed schedule of leadership sessions,
workshops and socializing.
Conference participants will extend their conference experience
in the fall by implementing a project in their respective
communities.
The Gate caught up with a few of the conference
attendees on Thursday after a tour of the Smith campus and
before dinner with President Christ, to talk about their
experiences.
 Gihad Elsadig Abunafeesa, fourth-year student
at Ahfad University School of Medicine, Omdurman, Sudan
Abunafeesa is embarking on a multi-year student-led project
that will train between 100 and 200 Sudanese women to become
involved in maintaining peace and good health in their communities
throughout Sudan.
When she finishes her
six-year program in medicine at Ahfad University, Abunafeesa
will pursue a career in public health, particularly women’s and refugees’ health.
Attending the WEW conference was essential for Abunafeesa,
she said.
“This conference
fuels the woman leader within me. It has helped refine
my goals and has shown me the importance of patience and
persistence in bringing about change.
“I’ve gained a lot of intangible tools for leadership
at this conference,” she added. “Just the opportunity
to meet and share with so many people from so many places
has been very important to me. It shows that women are life-time
learners.”
 Rukhsana Saddul, professor of psychology,
University of Punjab, Pakistan
“In Pakistan, we’ve started to realize women’s
education is very important,” said Saddul, who attended
the WEW conference with two of her students at the University
of Punjab, Maria Mujeeb, a computer science major, and Sehar
Butt, who studies business and information technology.
Saddul said the three
women have gained invaluable experience at the conference
in leadership methods and ideas for helping other women
become leaders around the world. “We will
be better able to introduce important global ideas to other
women” as a result of what they learned this week,
she said.
 Afra Aatiq Nasib, 2008
graduate in applied communication, Dubai Women’s
College, United Arab Emirates
Nasib, whose uncle, a firefighter, died three months ago
while battling a blaze in Dubai, plans to apply her experience
and leadership to improving safety standards in the U.A.E.,
a country in which safety codes lag behind a flurry of construction
in recent years, she said.
For Nasib, the WEW conference
and a similar women’s
leadership conference she attended in Dubai last year, have
been about personal progress.
“I grew a lot as a person these past three days,” she
said. “I found my own leadership style.”
Nasib, who will pursue
a career in journalism, appreciated the opportunities for
networking with other women scholars. “It’s
about conversations in the hallways, and having lunch with
other women here, learning how to ask questions and listen
well. This conference really helped me with that.”
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