• New Head of WHO Puts Women and Africa at Top of Her Agenda. [Raw Story] Bird flu expert and former Hong Kong Director of Health Margaret Chan was formally elected Thursday as the new head of the World Health Organization. She was confirmed as the new Director-General by the World Health Assembly of 193 member states. After her election, she told the Assembly she wanted to be judged by the impact WHO's work has on the people of Africa and on women across the globe. "What matters most to me is people. And two specific groups of people in particular. I want us to be judged by the impact we have on the health of the people of Africa, and the health of women," said Chan. "Improvements in the health of the people of Africa and the health of women are key indicators of the performance of WHO.

• Cazenga's Female Personalities Honored. [AllAfrica.com] The country’s ruling party (MPLA) municipal secretary and Hoji ya Henda communal administrator, respectively, Violante Buila and Madalena Vicente Segunda, were honored by the Angolan Women Organization (OMA)'s local committee, for being at the head of top administrative posts. The ceremony that happened in Grafanil district was held in the ambit of the celebrations of the 31st anniversary of National Independence.

• Football - Huambo Hosts National Senior Female Cup. [AllAfrica.com] The second edition of the national female soccer championship, in which will participate 10 teams in representation of the provinces of Luanda, Cabinda, Benguela, Bie and Huila, will take place in Angola's central Huambo Province. ANGOP learnt on Wednesday in this city that the host province will participate in the competition with two teams to be qualified in the final of the provincial championship, which opened on Sunday, with six competitors. According to the provincial coordinator of female football, Eugénio Colembi, the holding of the national cup here, will allow the foment and extension of female football in the country.

• Army Rolls Out Carpet for Women. [Reuters AlertNet, UK] Forty years after independence, Botswana is ready to recruit its first women soldiers to private and officer ranks, depending on their academic qualifications. "It took 20 years of lobbying, the last bastion is finally down," remarked an elated Ntombi Setshwaelo, spokeswoman for Emang Basadi, a women's rights NGO. The Botswana Defense Force (BDF), established in 1977, plans to recruit its first women soldiers in March 2007, but those aspiring to a career in uniform should not expect any preferential treatment. "They will follow military standards and be required to walk 100km in the burning sun with a pack on their back, just as male soldiers do," BDF commander Lt-Gen Tebogo Masire told a recent press conference. 

• The Man Behind Female Soldiers. [AllAfrica.com] Five years ago, Botswana National Front (BNF) chairman and MP for Lobatse Nehemiah Modubule says the entire Parliament was behind him except the voluble Palapye legislator and ex-cabinet minister Boyce Sebetela. Despite Sebetela's lone opposition, Modubule's motion calling for the recruitment of women into the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) got unanimous support and sailed through Parliament. It took five years but the government has relented to allow women to join the army. "It was a good thing that my honourable colleagues supported the motion," Modubule said after the announcement that women would become soldiers. He said it was inevitable that MPs across the political divide would back his motion.

• Women Reminded of their Role in Development. [AllAfrica.com] A three-week training workshop was organized in Yaounde to provide them with skills for onward transmission to other women. Serious lessons on how to make women aware of their capabilities in enhancing development have been passed out to some selected leaders of women groups in Yaounde. Organized by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), since November 2, the training exercise was built on the premise that women are wonderfully endowed with potentials which society has not been able to exploit. Privileged to receive the training were women from the ten provinces of Cameroon. Jemnet Kem, the National Program Officer for UNIFEM, tells of the program as one which will significantly transform the life of Cameroonian women particularly those in the rural areas.

• Female Artist to Sing for Cardiac Centre. [AllAfrica.com] Ethiopian young singer Abeba Lakew known to her fans as 'Abby' is planning to appear on the stages in Ethiopian major towns to help the Children's Heart fund of Ethiopia (CHFE), The Daily Monitor has learnt. According to the source, Abeba, accompanied by her brother, who also plays keyboard, will arrive here in Addis on Sunday night from United States where she is currently lives. The singer Ababa who is famous with her latest album 'Man ale Indante Yale' songs in took the initiative to sing to raise funds for the only centre in the country with an aim to help people with heart problems, especially children, get treatments.

• First Lady Advocates Empowerment of Women As Effective Tool to Fight AIDS. [AllAfrica.com] The First Lady, Mrs. Theresa Kufuor has advocated the empowerment of women as an effective tool for fighting HIV and AIDS. She argued that when women are socially and financially independent they would be better able to raise healthier families. The First lady was speaking at a stigmatization and sensitization workshop on HIV/AIDS in Tamale. The program was organized by the Mother and Child Community Development Foundation, a non-governmental organization, which the First Lady is the Patron. It was held in collaboration with the Ghana AIDS Commission and under the theme, 'Treat the Child as Your Own: Let’s Wage War Against HIV/AIDS'. It attracted women groups and other organization across the Northern region.

• Veteran Liberian Female Soldier Proposes Military College. [Running Africa, GA] The need to have a modern army and educated military men and women that Liberians can be proud of begins with a military college, an AFL veteran has proposed. Joyce DeLine, a prominent Liberian based in the U.S., said Liberian army was once referred to as nokos, but at this time, especially in the 21sth century, Liberian army must not serve as a dumping ground. “No more nokos….the army is the pride of the nation upon which the security of the people and nation rests,” she said in her email to runningafrica.com over the weekend from her home in Georgia. DeLine looks back to the days when men and women of the Armed Forces of Liberia were dehumanized only because of their level of education, even though they were sacrificing to protect their country. “Let us not allow history to repeat itself,” she said.

• The Slide From Poverty Into the Sex Trade. [AllAfrica.com] An estimated 600000-800000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year, 80% of whom, according to this year's Trafficking in Persons: United States Agency for International Development Response report, are women and girls, and up to 50% minors. Mozambique is a source country for those recruited with promises of lucrative jobs in SA and then sold to brothels, businesses and farms. Weekend Review recently gave substance to these shocking statistics. An investigation uncovered a human-trafficking syndicate operating from Komatipoort, a few kilometres from the Mozambique-SA border.

Nigeria

• Dress Code for Female Bankers Not Indecent --NECA Boss. [AllAfrica.com] For some time now, there has been a worrisome development in our banks. Young girls employed by some banks are told to remain unmarried for about two years. In other banks, those who get married must not get pregnant until a period specified by the bank's management. At the same time, these girls who are mainly young graduates are employed as marketing managers who must meet a set target of some millions of Naira if not billions, for their employers. Now, this is an issue everyone talks about.

• Rural Women Benefit from Literacy Training. [The Tide, Nigeria] A total of 324 women from Ikwerre Local government Area of Rivers have graduated from the state’s Rural Women Literacy Project. (RUWOLP) The program, which is being run in conjunction with the National Council for Women Society, is used to provide basic literacy skills for rural women. Speaking at the graduation ceremony held at Isiokpo in Rivers, Justice Mary Odili, wife of the state governor, described education as the only factor that projected the aspiration of women.

• Ward Congresses - Women Leading the Way. [AllAfrica.com] Last week's People Democratic Party (PDP) ward congresses created a great opportunity to see grassroots' communities decide who they want to represent them at the forth-coming primaries. The congresses also provided a chance to observe one of downplayed but fundamentally important roles of women and the overall contribution to democracy building. It was very striking to see women come out en masse to participate in this all important political activity of electing delegates. A popular Yoruba political song says:" Obinrin lo ni ibo" (women own the vote). While this may be a humorous chant in the battle of the genders on the political field, and as some say a veiled reference to a sign of the tilt in the balance of power, yet it could also in some way portray the true picture of the current political landscape. Are we about to see the genderization of the political terrain?

• Nigerian Queens Conquer Africa Again. [OhmyNews International, South Korea] An old adage goes that in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. This could well have been written for the Super Falcons, the Nigerian women's football side. They have dominated the women's version of the African Nation's cup, known as the African Women's Championship (AWC) since inception in 2001, winning all five titles so far. This latest title came on Nov. 11 in the Nigerian southern town of Warri, following their victory over the Black Stars of Ghana, 1-0.

• Nun Gets 30-Year Sentence. [Toronto Sun] Roman Catholic nun has been sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping militias kill hundreds of people hiding in a hospital during Rwanda's 1994 genocide, a senior judicial official said yesterday. Theophister Mukakibibi was sentenced by a traditional court for helping Hutu militiamen to kill ethnic Tutsis seeking refuge from the slaughter in Butare hospital, where she worked. "She was responsible for selecting Tutsis and would throw them out of the hospital and the militia would then kill them," said Jean Baptiste Ndahumba, president of the local gacaca court in Butare town. "This nun was organizing people to be killed."

• "Stepping Stone" Helps End Violence Against Women in South Africa. [Voice of America] The project, called Stepping Stones, was originally a series of workshops with men and women in separate groups discussing – among other things – HIV / AIDS and Safer Sex. However, Stepping Stones also addressed gender issues in relationships and has brought a reduction in violence against women. The program began in Uganda but was adapted for South Africa by Professor Rachel Jewkes, the director of the Gender and Health Research Unit at South Africa’s Medical Research Council. She says Stepping Stones “tries to build better relationships, improve communication, specifically communication skills training, and tries to get people to reflect on why they behave the way they do…” That consciousness-raising effort is combined with the message that it’s not okay to batter women.

• Banks Ignore Black Women. [Finance24, South Africa] Almost two thirds of South African black women entrepreneurs, more than 1 million business owners overall, have no access to credit or loans and represent a lucrative new market, a World Bank study found on Tuesday. "We've been speaking to a few of them (banks) and saying: 'If you mean business and want to grow your business financing in the coming years, you can't ignore this market'," said Natalie Africa, a senior program officer at the International Finance Corp, the World Bank's private sector arm.

• In War-Torn Sudan, Women Wage Peace. [Christian Science Monitor] When the farming tribes of Darfur took up arms more than two years ago against what they saw as a neglectful Arab-dominated government, Samia Ahmed Nihar's brothers, uncles, and male cousins joined the struggle. But as a lecturer in development studies at Khartoum University in Sudan's capital, Ms. Nihar, a mother of two, took on a different role. With the government's media machine and its compliant local charities refusing to acknowledge the horrors of Darfur, Ms. Nihar became a secret conduit to ensure that the real story made its way to international journalists and charities in Khartoum. A member of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) rebel group, she risked imprisonment or worse to make sure that the truth of the Arab janjaweed militia and government attacks on civilian villages became known.

• Women Peace Caravan. [Voice of America] The Ugandan government has set December first for Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels to assemble at the agreed camps. The Minister of State for Defense Ruth Nankabirwa says the government would withdraw from the Southern Sudan mediated peace process if the rebels do not assemble by December first as required by a new extension to the August 26 truce. Meanwhile, a caravan of Ugandan women has begun a five-day peace journey to the South Sudan capital of Juba.  Hope Mwesigye is the Ugandan minister of state in charge of local government.  She explains to VOA English to Africa reporter James Butty the reason for the women’s peace caravan. “The purpose is to demonstrate that Ugandan women are supportive of the peace talks that are taking place between the government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army. And to show the whole world that we need support from both sides as well as creating awareness among the population that Kony has caused enough suffering for the people of Northern Uganda and that it’s high time that the suffering came to an end,” she said.

• Include Women On Peace Team - Mao. [AllAfrica.com] Gulu District Chairman Nobert Mao has asked the government and the Lords Resistance Army rebels to provide platform to women to vividly participate in the on-going Juba peace process. "It is the women who have been widowed, abandoned and raped. It is time for their voices to be heard," he said. "We would like the LRA and the government to give a platform to women in the on-going peace talks. They have had a lot of painful experiences." Mao said.

• Unionist Fights for Dignity of Women. [Voice of America] In Zimbabwe, political activism -- especially for those who are not ruling party members -- often comes with the threat of violence. One feminist and union activist, Tabitha Khumalo, knows this well. She has persevered in her fight for women's equality, including a drive to give women access to sanitary pads, despite violence by men who oppose public discussions of women's issues. Tabitha Khumalo says her activism began in 1999, when she noticed a woman walking uncomfortably in the middle of the road. Curious, Tabitha approached her and asked her why she wasn’t walking on the sidewalk. The woman replied by staring downwards, her eyes pleading as she gestured towards the ground. As Tabitha looked down she saw blood pooling next to the woman’s shoe. The woman explained that she doesn’t have enough money to buy sanitary pads.

• Women Must Increase Economic Knowledge, Participation. [AllAfrica.com] Women entrepreneurs have been challenged to take an interest and learn more about economic policies, trade opportunities and sources of finance for success in their businesses. To help boost the country's economy, more women should be fully engaged and committed to their businesses since men were in an advantageous position because of prevalent discrimination and exclusion of women. Speaking at a gender and literacy seminar held in Harare yesterday, the Minister of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development, Cde Oppah Muchinguri, stressed the importance of women entrepreneurs meeting often to network and share experiences.