Language, Gender and Leadership Network

The Language, Gender and Leadership Network will enhance economic development and the welfare of women and girls in LMICs by identifying the key challenges facing them in order for them to become a successful generation of leaders in businesses and politics in Africa and beyond. The Network's creation will provide an innovative opportunity for academics, policy makers, NGOs, charities and other stakeholders to focus on the core communicative skills required to succeed as leaders in businesses and politics in LMICs, through a focus on the sociolinguistics of narrative life histories. A foundational principle of the Network is to place the voices and stories of women and girls at its core. The narratives that will be focused upon span adolescence, early adulthood and later adulthood and bring together stories told by women and girls about their gender identities to investigate emergent patterns, where key information regarding language, gender identity and leadership can be analysed. We aim to inform and influence policy makers of the gender-based inequality challenges currently being faced, alongside equipping communities of women and girls with the aspirations, role-models and beliefs required to succeed in future leadership positions.

Our goals align with key criteria for bringing sustainable change in international development, identified by the UN's Sustainable Development Agenda 2030, the World Humanitarian Summit and UN Women's World Survey on the Role of Women in Development (WSRWiD 2014): if sustainable development and gender equality are ever to be achieved, research and interventions are required to embrace women's equal participation as leaders and decision-makers within their societies. Communication is a fundamental way in which legitimate participation in public domains is measured and achieved. Without maximizing the potential of its women and girls within businesses and politics, sustainable economic development will not result.

The Network's initial focus is upon narratives from Uganda and Kenya, both in receipt of ODA, and where core members of the Network already have well-established links across both urban and rural communities, where narrative data capture already exists. We then shift our focus to a pan-African perspective. An interactive, globally accessible website will be developed, where participants from Africa and other global countries who receive ODA funding will be able to join and actively engage in online communities by uploading their own narratives to share experiences, act as peer supporters, role models, mentors and figures of inspiration for each other. The long-term legacy will be the production of a unique, sustainable digital research tool. Alongside this, to address those living in remote communities currently without electricity or Internet acccess, the network will co-create drama-based training interventions and a graphic narrative 'storybook' with women and girls themselves. These will then be used as empowerment and inspirational tools by our Project Partner, The Institute of Social Transformation and other charities, NGOs and professional organisations working on addressing gender inequalities in rural communities.

The resultant website and resources will be a unique corpus of oral life-history narratives from women and girls ranging from those who have already succeeded in leadership positions and have strong leadership reputations, through to adolescent girls in schools who could be future leaders with the right levels of empowerment, education and training. This approach enables previously marginalized and silenced voices to be heard and placed at the centre of the Network. Our findings will also be used as a resource to influence and inform policy-making decisions, through the network's contacts at UN Women Africa and through our Project Consultant's role as policy maker and member of the pan-African Trade & Impact Group and the African Leadership Network.

The Network is designed to change the life chances and choices of women and girls in LMICs by collectively empowering them from within their communities, as well benefitting policy makers by giving them access to gender inequality evidence, identified by women themselves, in their own words. There are three resources that are planned for the successful delivery of long-term impact and the overall legacy of this Network project: 1) A fully interactive, wiki-style website for women and girls' life history stories to be told, shared and archived 2) the development of a graphic narrative short story book and 3) drama training resources, for use as an interventionist training toolkit. The website will include the option of embedding links to external crowd-funding platforms, to fund particular participants with their entrepreneurial ideas, thus acting as a direct mechanism to provide economic enhancement and development to particular individuals within their local communities. This is based upon a successful model currently used by the University of Nottingham's campaigns and alumni office, particularly for successful global funding of ideas in the developing world.

The long-term aim of the website is to bring together the lived experiences of women and girls across a number of ODA countries, looking to establish broader common patterns, alongside specific socio-cultural differences, in order to inform international development policy. The website can be used to gain clearer insights into people's everyday life experiences and the life experiences of those around them as tools to shed light on societal power structures and dominant communication practices that work against gender equality. The aim of this collective information-gathering is to act as a resource to establish connected communities to empower women themselves, and to also be a useful resource to pinpoint the areas where policy makers should focus in order to bring about sustained socio-cultural changes to enhance economic growth and improve the welfare of women by increasing their numbers in leadership positions in their local communities as entrepreneurs, business leaders and politicians.

We have a number of existing engagements with relevant end users to aid the overall success of the impact delivery of this Network. Dr Lumala has a series of established engagements with a number of NGOs, charities and stakeholders in Kenya and Uganda. He has previously worked as a consultant for Women into Boards (Kenya) and he is mentor and advocate to Harriet Adong, Executive Director of the Federation of Integrated Rural Development (Uganda, see his CV for further details of successful engagement and consultancy work with key stakeholders). Professor Mullany is actively engaged in a number of initiatives with the Mustard Seed Project Charity, including fundraising designed to empower women and girls in northern Uganda and improve health and literacies by getting them back into education by building a school and surgery. Dr Mooneeram is a respected policy maker and actively involved in the African Leadership Network and the African Trade & Impact Network. She is well-positioned to use these routes to aid awareness of our specially designed impact resources to promote the advocacy work of the Network. The aim is for this to increase its reach across Africa and beyond to other LMICs, particularly through her contacts at UN Women.

The website will be hosted and provided as part of Nottingham's CMS system and so costs are covered throughout the 7 years as part of the University's existing IT provision. Moderation will continue from the Management Group. We have budgeted for the creation of the short story empowering women attendees to gain hands-on, practical experience of creative enterprise with local illustrators and the final booklet will be printed, distributed and its use monitored by our Project Partner in rural communities in Uganda and Kenya.