Cherie Blair
Wise words from a champion of female empowerment
hen it comes to empowering women, Cherie Blair is an irresistible force. The accomplished barrister has been a fervent campaigner for women’s rights since the 1970s, when she discovered that in her law practice, women weren’t being given the same opportunities as men. Since then, Blair, the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has spent her career fighting for gender equality in education and the workplace. In 2008, she set up the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, which helps women build startups in developing markets, such as in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. In 2011, she became the chancellor of the Asian University for Women (AUW), an institution based in Chittagong, Bangladesh, that offers scholarships to women from disadvantaged backgrounds to study for worldclass liberal arts degrees, with a mission of creating the next generation of capable and visionary female leaders in Asia. Here, Blair shares some insights on her work and advocacy.
My life was transformed by education. I come from a working-class Liverpool family, where my mother and grandmother left school at 14, and my father left school at 16. But all of them wanted for myself and my sister to have those educational opportunities that they didn’t have. I was lucky at the time because I was able to continue my studies for free. Without my education, I would never have been a lawyer, never have met and married my husband, and never have ended up doing 10 years at 10 Downing Street.
In the 1970s, the thinking was that girls don’t really
do law. And so I spent the rest of my career challenging that, and fighting for girls to be educated, but also to be allowed to put their education into practice.
If only we allow women to have equal access to
the workplace as men, we won’t be missing out on a 12-trillion-dollar opportunity (based on a 2015 Mckinsey Global Institute report). In sub-saharan Africa every year, they’re losing US$95 billion simply because women aren’t getting the same access to education, healthcare and political and economic power as men.
We need to send a very strong message: girls’
education matters. Up to the tertiary age. Because all the important roles in the community, within businesses and in the government, will come from people who have a tertiary education.
When you educate a girl, you have a bigger knockon effect than a boy, since you are also educating her future children. A mother who has been educated is more likely to educate her own children.
There are many parts of Asia where students get, at
best, rote learning. Their education doesn’t encourage them to think for themselves. At AUW, we want to show the diversity of cultures, religions and beliefs in Asia, and though our girls come from different backgrounds, they have these in common: the desire to learn and get a good education, and the courage to speak out.