Mary Chinery-Hesse

Mary Chinery-Hesse, FAAS, OSG, née Blay (born 29 October 1938) is an international Civil servant and diplomat serving as the first woman Chancellor of the University of Ghana, inducted on 1 August 2018. She was the first female Deputy Director-General of the International Labour Organization.

Speaking at the Fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995 in Beijing. Theme:Gender equality and the empowerment of all women

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 * That point was, and still is, that all women are working women and their work should be valued. Women do housework, care work, looking after children but none of this is reflected in the statistics. Outside of the home, their work tends to be low paid and in segregated areas. I am an economist. We at the ILO were looking at how women’s work could be counted, because what is not counted is not valued.
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 * The situation for women has improved since then. We see laws on gender equality, maternity leave and equal opportunity. Since Beijing a number of countries embraced the concept of the girl child and several have adopted policies to ensure that girls go to school. At the University of Ghana, where I am Chancellor, there are more women students than men.
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 * I know that women in the world I grew up in did not have a voice. The truth is that at the high table we still do not have enough women. The policymakers are still mainly men. We need to woo enlightened men to back our quest for equality because unless we make men champions for gender equality there will never be a permanent change.

Speaking on urgent review of legal education regime

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 * The world we live in has changed exponentially since the Legal Professions Act was passed 62 years ago, and there is an urgent need for its revision to reflect these changes and make the training of lawyers in Ghana more relevant and in tune with the world we live in today.
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 * I would like to reiterate the need to balance the training of the large number of lawyers that are needed in the country with the quality of education offered, as well as the provision of human and material resources of the institutions that train our lawyers.

Speaking at Chartered Institute of Marketing Ghana(CIMG) Annual National Marketing Performance Awards

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 * Brand management is so important. Whilst not playing anything down, we must make sure that Ghana thrives in a competitive environment because things Ghanaian are known, loved and wanted. We must push and we will be okay. We are very modest as Ghanaians, we don’t blow our own trumpet. But in this competitive world, let’s put our Christian modesty aside and boast a little bit.
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 * Ghana’s tremendous efforts aimed at revitalizing the economy. A good number of sectors of the economy have totally recovered. I am sure the economy will recover, the ultimate recovery of the economy rests on the shoulders of business owners.