Ethiopian Group CEO, Ato Tewolde GebreMariam, has been honoured as Ambassador of UN Women’s He For She campaign at the launching event of the March 8 all women operated flight held at the VIP Salon of Terminal 1.
At the event attended by Ethiopian Executive Management team and staff members, Mrs. Funmi Balogun, Deputy Country Representative UN Women, placed the He For She campaign pin on Ato Tewolde to advance the cause of gender equality at Ethiopian. The He For She campaign is a global solidarity movement which brings men and boys together to advance the cause of women’s empowerment and gender equality.
In her speech at the ceremony, Mrs. Balogun said, “Ethiopian is already a wonderful global airline. We also want it to be number one in the world when it comes to gender equality. We want Ethiopian to actively encourage women to be pilots and engineers; which means we have to seek them out.
“We have to make it easier for women to pursue those professions… That is the commitment we want from the CEO Ato Tewolde GebreMariam and everybody else from Ethiopian, and that is why we are trying to pin him. And we are very pleased that he agreed to be one of our ambassadors.”
After the pin ceremony, Ato Tewolde said, “Women are not weak, they don’t need support. What they need is equal treatment, equal opportunity like men. That is what we are trying to do at Ethiopian Airlines. We are trying to provide equal opportunity for employment and for training. And if there are circumstances where women need special treatment because of their background, we do that. Because equal opportunity means bringing women to equal level, equal competitive stage with men.
“After our first all women operated flight in November, I heard that the height requirement for women pilots was high. Many interested girls wrote emails to me saying that, ‘look this is effectively excluding us from the competition’. So we lowered the height requirement to make sure that they are given equal opportunity like men. In the next five to ten years we want to increase women’s participation not only in terms of the total employee proportion, but also in the profile; more pilots, more technicians, more engineers. We have to make sure that women participate in all human endeavors.
“Once again I commit on behalf of the management that we will continue to provide equal opportunity for women. We are going to work with universities and secondary schools to make sure that women are given equal opportunity to join the Airline.”
