How one young advocate helped pass feminist policy in Ethiopia
Meti, a 23-year-old student and girls’ education advocate, writes about her path to advocacy and the successes and challenges she faced along the way. (Courtesy of Meti)
Meti, a 23-year-old student and girls’ education advocate, writes about her path to advocacy and the successes and challenges she faced along the way.
Addis Ababa, where I have lived my whole life, is a colorful, vibrant place. When you step out the door in the mornings you see young people crossing paths to get to work or school. I could never imagine living anywhere else — it’s home.
My community means more to me now than it ever has before. I lost my mom to cancer three years ago. She was a secondary school teacher and had a deep belief in the importance of education for her daughters. In her absence, my dad has raised my older sister and I to be strong young women. For him there has never been any negotiation: You’re going to college, you’re going to finish your first degree and then you’re going to work on your master’s. “Education is the best thing I can give you,” he says. Everything else he can provide for us — money, resources — is fleeting, but education sticks with you your whole life.
My parents instilled these values in me and made me want to do well in school. But I faced difficulties in achieving this goal. When I was only 7, a teacher noticed that while I excelled in class and participated often, I was not performing well in my exams. She was curious as to why, and brought it up with my parents. We soon learned that I had dyslexia, a learning disability that affects people’s ability to read fluently, spell words correctly and learn languages.
Coming from a high-achieving family that emphasized the importance of education made it hard for me to accept my learning disability for what it was. I used to push myself to read a lot and went through books at a very fast pace, wanting to catch up with my classmates. But this just left me feeling more frustrated and tired. Eventually I stopped setting those standards for myself. I realized it was better to focus on my education and not so much on my grades. As long as I was learning something that I found interesting, my school experience had been a success.
“Coming from a high-achieving family that emphasized the importance of education made it hard for me to accept my learning disability for what it was.”
Reflecting on that time, I realize how lucky I was to have had an education that accommodated my needs and allowed me to thrive as a student, as well as parents who supported me in everything I did. This is not always the case in Ethiopia — especially for girls. In my community, there are different expectations for how young women and men should lead their lives. I’ve talked to girls in my community as young as 18 who have a very family-centric view of life; they want to get married and have kids as soon as possible. I think society conditions some people into thinking that that’s what young women need to do by a certain age. Meanwhile, society conditions boys to want the same things, but they’re given space and opportunity to grow. They’re told: “You should have a good job. You should think for yourself. You should learn more. You should travel — and then you should get married.” If you’re a boy, familial obligations come later in life, when you’re in your thirties or close to your forties. But for girls, it’s as soon as even before you finish high school.
By the time I was 17, I had perceived these inequalities in my community and was looking for opportunities to make a change by volunteering. That’s how I stumbled upon the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), an organization and Malala Fund partner that develops women’s leadership skills to advance gender equality and socioeconomic empowerment in Ethiopia. I went to their office and met with Bement, the former General Secretary of YWCA Ethiopia, who has since become my mentor. She told me that there weren’t opportunities to volunteer, but if I was interested in interning they could use the help in the office.
My internship started out with menial tasks, like printing and transcribing. Then one day, an opportunity came up relating to the Maputo Protocol, an international human rights instrument that guarantees rights to African women including economic empowerment, roles in political processes, sexual and reproductive health and rights and an end to violence against women and female genital mutilation. The YWCA was sponsoring a youth champion to advocate on behalf of the Maputo Protocol and lobby African leaders to ratify it in their respective countries. I had never worked on issues related to gender before, but Bement encouraged me to take the training and see how I felt. At the training, we learned about advocacy, feminism and feminist policy and took an in-depth look at the Maputo Protocol. From this, I figured out that I have always been a feminist. I have always upheld the feminist value of equality for boys and girls. If I have the opportunity to speak up about the injustice that young women see every day, I’ll do it.
I worked on the Maputo Protocol project for one year, advocating for girls’ and women’s rights — not only in Ethiopia but across the African continent. In my fight to ratify the Maputo Protocol, I joined forces with other advocates working within the feminist movement in Africa to lobby decision-makers directly. I remember thinking: “This is where I belong.” A few years after my time on the project ended, the Ethiopian government ratified the Maputo Protocol, representing an amazing win for me as an advocate and for young women throughout Ethiopia who would stand to benefit from the rights it guaranteed them.
“I worked on the Maputo Protocol project for one year, advocating for girls’ and women’s rights — not only in Ethiopia but across the African continent.”
But I knew our work wasn’t over. There is a huge gap between policy and implementation; even if ratified, feminist policies like the Maputo Protocol won’t change people’s lives unless they’re implemented by our leaders. At this point in my life, I had a decision to make about my future at university. Though I had thought about applying to colleges in the U.S. and Canada, I realized I now wanted to stay in Addis Ababa and continue my advocacy work in my community. So when I was accepted at Addis Ababa University, a public college in my hometown, I decided to enroll.
For the next few years while I was in university, I worked on several different projects with the YWCA focusing on getting more and more young women into leadership roles. I started running internship and volunteer programs within the YWCA office so that young women could get valuable experience in advocacy, hoping it might be as life-changing for them as it was for me.
“I learned from this experience that while advocacy can be so draining a lot of the time, it is worth it when you see that practical change take place,” Meti shares. (Courtesy of Meti)
When the COVID-19 pandemic reached Ethiopia in early 2020, I started working with the YWCA team on a gender-sensitive response to the crisis. We found that quarantine centers where people were sent who tested positive for or were exposed to the virus were not accessible to young women; most of them didn’t even have menstrual pads or women’s clothing available. But when we started speaking to health ministries and government officials, they asked for our help donating and buying these resources for women. And I thought: “Why? You’re budgeted, you have the money for this. Why aren’t you thinking ahead of time?” I was furious. There were so few people speaking out about this issue, and I felt like we were being silenced.
Luckily after a year of advocating — which included organizing meetings between government officials and women living in quarantine centers as well as releasing press releases to highlight the issue in the media — we were able to secure budgeting for a gender-sensitive pandemic response. It had been a tough, emotional process, but I felt very empowered at the end of it. I was 22 at the time — it was surreal for me to have had the opportunity to impact many women’s lives in such a direct way. I learned from this experience that while advocacy can be so draining a lot of the time, it is worth it when you see that practical change take place.
The next year, Dehab Mustefa Mohammed, the general secretary of YWCA, asked me if she could nominate me for the Malala Fund Fellowship. In its first year, the Malala Fund Fellowship brought together 10 young women from Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Pakistan to exchange ideas and gain advocacy skills and experience. I saw the fellowship as an opportunity to expand my advocacy and to learn from my peers who’ve been doing this work in other countries for years. In reality, what has benefitted me most has been meeting young women from around the world who are doing amazing work and getting to interact with them — both virtually and at in-person events like the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
“One thing that my time as a Malala Fund Fellow has allowed me to do is refocus my advocacy toward education,” Meti shares. (Courtesy of Meti)
One thing that my time as a Malala Fund Fellow has allowed me to do is refocus my advocacy toward education. I believe ensuring young people have access to a well-rounded, gender-transformative education is key to eradicating gender-based violence and inequality in my community and around the world. My hope is that one day, for example, we won’t have to teach men not to attack women; they will have learned from a young age not to participate in or normalize these harmful practices. I also hope to advocate for curriculums that go beyond memorizing facts and actually encourage students to become creative, well-rounded citizens. Our world will only be prepared to face issues like climate change if people have knowledge about them from a young age and the skills to invent and implement solutions.
My path to advocacy has been winding, but I’m so glad I’m here now. And if I can do it, anyone can. All you have to do is open your mind and be open to learning new things. If you’re interested in advocacy, my advice is to start by volunteering a lot. See what’s going on in your community, identify what issue you’re most passionate about resolving and, most importantly, take your time. There is no guided path that you need to follow to get to a certain place. That’s the beauty of it; we all have different journeys. Just because someone did something one way, doesn’t mean you have to do it that way too.
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