“It is difficult to find women staff” is a mantra which is often heard among (mostly male) staff working in the Global South. We decided to challenge that, and on International Women’s Day 2021 launched our new internship programme to reshape the gender imbalance of our workforce. Since then, seven women interns have joined Link Ethiopia both at Addis Ababa Country office and at Soddo Field office. This proves the difficulty is not a lack of capable staff, but the lack of opportunities for women who have lots to give professionally – as much as their male counterparts.
We want to “walk the talk” – how can we have a focus on girls’ education, without making a push towards achieving gender equality and women’s rights starting from within our own organization?
To this end, the internship programme aims to create opportunities for female students who are about to complete their university education and recent female graduates to familiarise themselves with the working environment and gain practical experience. It is also an opportunity for us to identify future talent so that they can continue their professional journey in and out of our organization.
We think it has been a great success. Many have stayed on at Link, finished studies, or gone on to get jobs in the sector elsewhere. We’ve also formalised our partnership with nearby Soddo University, strengthening local connections and providing opportunities for students and graduates alike.
While no women so far are holding positions of leadership within Link Ethiopia, we are confident that the internship programme can change this trend as it provides us with a pool of prospective employees for future resourcing purposes in support of internal succession planning. The face of our organization is in fact gradually changing and so is the gender-gap, and our percentage of female women staff has increased from 18% in 2020 to 40% in 2022. We are happy that our final goal of achieving an ideal 50/50 split between female and male staff at all levels of hierarchy is becoming closer by the day, but most importantly, we are happy to prove that it is possible to find talented women staff when adequate human resource measures are put in place.