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peace agreement reduced the open warfare, deadly flare-ups still occur and the effects of the past are still deeply felt.  

Beyond Colombia, Nadia and the She Is Foundation also work with women and girls in nearby countries, who may face other forms of disruption or deprivation. For all concerned, the Foundation develops what it calls “a sustainable women’s empowerment model.” Along with providing basic humanitarian aid, the Foundation conducts education-and-support programs that range from business and social entrepreneurship to peacemaking and tech innovation for girls. (For example, She Is connects them virtually with the NASA Space Center in Houston, and recently sent 31 Colombian girls there for an in-person immersion experience.) 

Altogether, the work that Nadia leads has touched over 15,000 women and girls thus far. Here are highlights from her interview with World Woman Hour. 

Q: Nadia, what put you on the course to do what you’re doing now?

Nadia Sanchez: This is something that I had been dreaming about for years. I grew up in a family of teachers, where I always saw my mother helping women and girls.  Later, I worked for the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, so I created the She Is project initially for the Bank. When the Bank rejected it, I decided to return to Colombia, to discover that reality and to work and walk through so many places, so many hostile terrains. I wanted to know the truths and stories of women and girls who were looking for great opportunities. And that’s when I founded She Is as a nonprofit organization.  

What I thought at first was a frustration, a rejected idea, has turned out to be a foundation with great impact for women and girls in Latin America. Its purpose is to create a global agenda that will improve the quality of life for many women and girls who have been invisible—both in the countryside and everywhere. 

Q: What inspired your passion for women’s issues? 

Nadia:  There is still a historical debt that society owes to women and girls, in regard to visualizing a better future and being able to believe and create. I think that is what motivates me the most. And I can transfer that passion to others, so that more people have the opportunity to become great women who not only conquer high positions, but also achieve their hopes and dreams.

Today women are passionate, and I love it. I am passionate about working for them, because it has allowed me to lead, and to carry the voices of all those women who have been silenced. 

Q: The work that you do is very challenging. What have you learned about failure, and overcoming failures? 

Nadia: What I have learned is to embrace failure and generate a thousand solutions. I always say that failure is a new opportunity, a new window that opens in the middle of 99 doors that have been closed. 

When you embrace failure, you have to understand that it is part of the essence of a process: not only a part of the essence of trying, but of the path of life. Many times when we say “I failed,” we think that it is synonymous with defeat. But when we talk about failure, we should mean that we have done so many tests along the way that today, we know the best way to do it—because we embraced failure and faced our fears. 

That fear is not a constant.  On the contrary, it is the little kick that can drive us. And once I learned to embrace failure, I was no longer afraid of it. 

Q: It’s so important, isn’t it, for girls to understand that failures are part of the evolution of an idea? 

Nadia: That’s right. Sometimes they question us and tell us “I can’t fail!” It’s hard for them to understand that in the end, it’s part of the process. 

Q: If you could talk to a much younger version of yourself, what advice would you give?

Nadia: I always question myself, and I even love writing about that inner child that we all carry. I would say to my inner child not to question myself so much. When I was a child, I had to feel that everything was perfect and in order. I would have loved to understand that life is simply a process of imperfections. 

So the best advice is, let’s not judge ourselves so much. Let’s not demand so much of ourselves that it keeps us from living our dreams. As we say here in Colombia, don’t take it so hard every day that you don’t let the weathervane of your life flow. I always tell this to the girls I work with: Keep believing in yourself without judging yourself so much, like a perfectionist. Because the wonder of life is in the imperfections. 

Q: What changes can be made, so that more women can be more effective leaders?

Nadia: A big part of those changes is to understand that effective leadership starts from human leadership. We women are by nature maternal, and that must be reflected in empathy for others. We have to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, three sizes smaller, to understand the ability to lead. An effective leader does not destroy voices; an effective leader guides voices. 

And so, women today in global movements are preparing to lead—but they will lead with transformation, and with humanism. They will lead us toward a sensibility of empathy, of human fellowship, and of guidance. 

Q: To what extent is women’s health care important for the future?  

Nadia: It is extremely important. It is essential to talk about women’s health care as a necessity, not a privilege that is available only to some. All women and adolescent girls in the world deserve the right to decent menstrual health, to mental health. To be able to give birth with the comforts and conditions that some women have, but not all. 

In the future, we must talk about humanizing and raising awareness of women’s health. We cannot avoid issues like teenage pregnancies, or clandestine abortions, or topics such as breast cancer and uterine cancer. These things affect women and girls throughout their entire life processes of growth, gestation, and maturity. We must understand that health concerns for women and girls are different than they are for men. And for women in many regions of the world, access to knowledge and care continues to be a privilege. We have to achieve health care that is truly universal. 

Q: Are there particular health issues for women that you would want to call attention to? 

Nadia:  At She Is, we have an integrated model for empowering women, to give them the entrepreneurial and innovation tools to get ahead. And one thing we have to work on with them is mental health. In places where there has been armed conflict in Colombia, we have had to work with women literally from scratch, rescuing the survivors. They may have panic attacks or other mental health issues. Also, part of the problem is the amount of overload in women’s lives. The responsibility for family care falls much more on women, and this combines with being in a conflict environment to put pressure on their mental health. 

So, while there are endless factors that we are passionate about working on at the foundation, health is part of the base of the pyramid. Along with checking that the women’s physical health needs are being met, which could be anything from having sanitary napkins to an early diagnosis of an illness, we work with them throughout that mental and emotional transition, from resilience to reconciliation. They need to recognize themselves to believe what kind of people they are, and how far they are going to go and what they are going to achieve.  

Q: Do you have a superpower?

Nadia: I believe that all of us have a superpower. Part of my superpower is to give my best talents and compassion to help more women develop and believe in what they are capable of doing. I always say that every woman’s greatest superpower is being able to look back and see how many women you’ve helped to shine. 

Q: People who have been an inspiration to you? 

Nadia: Ever since I was a child, my father has motivated and inspired me. As children we know that our mother is an important figure, and obviously I am not leaving my mother aside. But I love to name my father because, among masculine figures, he has been an empowering dad. In addition to how he has talked to me and guided me, he has had an impressive life story. Seeing how he embraced failure in impossible moments—waking up every day to give a smile in the midst of chaos—has helped to give me the same resilience and strength. And it has helped me to transmit those qualities to other women. 

Also I would mention many great women leaders who can be inspirations to all of us. One is Nadia Murad, the young Iraqi woman who survived captivity and torture in her country, during the conflicts there, and who became a human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner. One who inspires me here in Colombia is Juana Ruiz, a National Peace Prize winner, who brought thousands of women forward after the armed conflict. And while of course we admire famous celebrities, I think of the thousands of women in Colombia who have worked with our foundation. We should also admire these “local celebrities” who transform us and generate change!  

Q: Do you have a message to young women or girls about what they can do today? 

Nadia: We are changing the world. Today you can be part of this in a very simple way, which is to believe in your dreams and make other girls believe. Our voices will never be silenced. We will always fight for what we think we can be—whether it is an astronaut, a scientist, a teacher, or anything that it is possible to dream of being. So, always believe. Never shut down your voice. Fight for those dreams and ideals. 

n.com/”>Organon honors her as a global leader of change — especially for her reporting on women’s health issues and inequality. 

In Mexico, Karla’s home country, she is well known to millions who follow TV news on the Televisa networks. Her reports also reach viewers in other nations with Spanish-language news outlets. She has traveled broadly, covering subjects from natural disaster response to the Syrian refugee crisis. She has received international awards and honors. Her award-winning work includes stories on maternal mortality in Latin America, in which she revealed situations where low-income women die when they can’t get proper care during pregnancy or childbirth. 

Karla is a strong advocate of in-depth journalism, as well as in-depth thinking and committed action by all of us. Interviewed for World Woman Hour, she argued passionately that complex issues can’t be reduced to “material for getting ‘likes’” in online media, and that stories about human tragedy can’t be reported merely for shock effect: “If you want to change society you have to get to the deepest levels of things. You have to look at how public institutions and others are doing or not doing their jobs.” She also shared some radical (and perhaps surprising) personal views on topics such as leadership for women. Here are the edited highlights. 

Q: What led you to your profession?

Karla Iberia Sanchez: When I was a child, I was very curious. My parents told me that at the dinner table, I was always opening the newspaper, even though I didn’t know how to read it yet. Then when I was eight or nine years old, I asked my father to buy me a magnifying glass. I just liked to investigate. 

No one in my family was a journalist; I didn’t even know there was a profession called investigative reporter. But then I learned at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and that is what I became. It’s a passion for finding out what’s really happening. It’s a passion for asking the questions that will show that. 

Q: And what stirred you to do the particular kind of investigating that relates to women and health? 

Karla: When I’m passionate about public health issues, it’s because I think these issues are a mirror of inequalities in society. The big difference between being an opinion reporter or a talking head and a health reporter out in the streets is that many times, you don’t choose who you will be speaking with. You don’t choose just to talk with a famous politician of the moment or someone who survived a horrendous accident. You go out to find stories of unrecognized pain, of people who are living every day in pain while they are looking for a future.

Many women in marginalized situations are not much older than children, but they are already working for the economic sustenance of the family and they are also the caregivers for the older ones. Even in the middle of a hurricane, they will take public transportation every day to begin work at 7 a.m. and then come back in the night to take care of the family. And then, to see a woman like this at one of the most vulnerable times of her life, in pregnancy and childbirth, being mistreated by public officials—to see her crying outside the doors of a public hospital because she’s in pain, she feels something is not right, and she can’t get in—this is a sign of inequality, and this is a sign of violence against women.

Maybe some editors of the biggest news outlets won’t think that story is important. But I think that story is important. I think it’s important to talk about these 14-year-olds who have preeclampsia because they are not prepared to have a child at that age, for example. Or women who died in El Salvador, because they tried to interrupt their pregnancy with a knife or a coat hanger.

Q: It does seem that we often don’t pay enough attention to the underlying issues in our societies. Could you say some more about that? 

Karla: Many times, when reporters are covering violence or forensics, people want to know about the incidents that are the most violent. But violence is not just the 72 migrants killed and buried in a mass grave. [Such mass murders have occurred in Mexico’s drug wars.] Violence is also to know social pain, and to experience the indignities that take away your humanity. Sometimes a reporter can find this coming through in many small details. I remember one day when I was covering a story in a very poor part of Mexico, and I saw a child with a big bandage on her ear. I asked “What happened to you?” and she said, “My grandmother cut my ear with scissors because I was making so much noise.”

This is the violence that kids are facing in the world. And then imagine the horrendous life of that grandmother, that would lead her to do that. So maybe violence is not just the 72 murders. Maybe it’s a child who has a bandage on her ear. Maybe it’s that we have a society where we are so stressed that we can’t even let a kid make noise.

Q: What can the rest of us do to help with issues like poverty, inequality, and systemic violence?

Karla: I think we have to be critical citizens. We have to go out and know what’s going on in the streets. If you are a social scientist or a politician, if you are a postgraduate professional, then you have the tools. You have the tools to transform society, and you have to be out in the streets and really try to understand what is happening.

I think a critical society requires many kinds of observation and social analysis. If you really want to change things you have to be aware of what’s happening with national budgets and legislators. Know your local authorities, know your local leaders and listen to them. To put it in terms of taking positive steps, I would say that what could help to solve these problems is to dedicate more of our time and talents to knowing how society works—and not just criticizing. It’s also finding how to put your own talents and passions to work in the service of others. Not for public exposure, not for posting on Instagram, but for fulfilling the mission of helping others. 

Q: If you were to give advice to young women today, who are searching for the best way to have their lives make a difference, what would you tell them? 

Karla: I would advise them to follow the fire they feel inside. If you are looking for something that will make society stronger, or make you better, don’t put a cover on your own fire. Don’t smother it just to be comfortable, just to watch another series on Netflix or to spend half an hour more on Instagram. There are moments in life when you feel a burning inside you to do something to make a change. You have to do it, even if you experience enormous difficulties. Sometimes discomfort or even extreme fatigue is not bad. It’s a sign of moving forward. 

Q: Finally, we’d like to see more women in leadership positions, whether it’s in journalism or any other field. In your judgment, what does leadership consist of? And how can women prepare to lead? 

Karla: There’s no school for leadership. There are schools of management, but leadership is a kind of a transit of yourself. This is the process I have seen in women that I admire. It’s like being in an escalator of yourself. Not an escalator of power, but an escalator of transit to being someone who can have influence in society—and not like an “influencer,” not for being popular. Real leadership is what I see in women who have been swimming into themselves, who have passed through borders into themselves.

It’s not an intention or a project of life to be a leader. Maybe sometimes that works, but leaders to me are people who gain the respect of their colleagues and the respect of society.  They are people who look for excellence. Instead of comforting themselves with their egos, they always ask: “What more can I be doing?” This means that leaders also must have a high sense of self-criticism. They have to be good learners. And then they can give advice [that others will listen to]. They are the people who can say, “Let’s stop doing that. Let’s move to a better way of doing things.”

l of us. 

Maria’s work has focused on an enzyme called telomerase. To explain it in very simple terms, telomerase (te-LOM-erase) is active inside living cells to varying degrees. When this activity runs at high levels, it allows the cells to keep dividing and replicating well beyond their usual lifespan. Such is the case in many cancer cells, producing tumors that grow and spread stubbornly. Finding a way to block the activity could be a big step forward in cancer treatment. Conversely, triggering or boosting telomerase activity in normal human cells could possibly slow down some of the effects of aging. 

Global research on telomerase had just started to gain momentum when Maria was finishing her PhD in Spain in the early 1990s. She did postdoctoral work at the renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, in New York, under Dr. Carol Greider—one of the co-discoverers of telomerase, who would later share a Nobel Prize for her work in that area. Maria then returned to Spain and rose rapidly in the field, being named to her present position in 2011. 

Her research output is immense. Maria has published over 250 scientific papers and has won numerous international awards. Dedicated science fans may be impressed to know that her “H Index” score—a measure of both the quantity and quality of a scientist’s research—is 81, a world-class figure. Here are edited highlights from her interview with World Woman Hour.

Q: Why are you so passionate about telomerase and molecular biology?

Maria Blasco: When I learned about molecular biology, I realized that it Is the science of understanding life on the molecular level. That you could actually manipulate life; you could cut and paste and alter the DNA, and in this way, learn about the origin of diseases and then about potential treatments for them. So for me it was an opportunity to learn what life is, and to be able to design treatments that someday, maybe, will work for diseases like cancer or many degenerative and age-related diseases that we seem to have been unable to treat. 

Q: What does the future of your research field look like? 

Maria: We are at a very exciting point. In the past 20 years or so, we have learned a lot about what telomeres are [the DNA strands at the tips of chromosomes], what telomerase is, and their importance in aging and cancer and different diseases. But now we’re at the point of really trying to apply all this knowledge to treat particular diseases. So this is where we will see whether the knowledge that we have generated is going to be useful for solving medical problems. 

Q:  Other leading scientists that you worked with also were women. Was that intentional, how does it feel, and what can you say about it in general?

Maria: I don’t think it was intentional, but yes, it happens that my PhD supervisor was a woman, Dr. Margarita Salas, who was one of the leading molecular biologists here in Spain. And then I went to work with another woman, Carol Greider. The telomerase field is full of women who have made key discoveries, and I think this has been very good for the progression of my career. I have always had the support of other women, and I had role models of women who actually led their own research.

Q: What are some major issues right now for women in molecular biology? Or in any of the biosciences? 

Maria: In these fields the main problem is not the number of young women at the start, who train up to the highest levels within the training system—let’s say up to the postdoctoral level—or who even become staff scientists. The problem is the percentage of women who then decide to move forward and become group leaders. This is still not 50%, so we still don’t have 50% women leaders in general in science, or in molecular biology. I think this is something that has to be corrected. Group leaders are important in research, because when you are a leader, you can decide what to study and how to apply your knowledge. I think it is also very important for having role models that could encourage more women to want to lead. 

Q: So, what are the solutions? 

Maria: At the Spanish National Cancer Center, we are doing a number of things to try to correct the situation. When we want to hire a new PI [principal investigator] in a new position, we wait until we have an equal number of men and women who are at the same level before we initiate the hiring process. We also have teleworking and all kinds of other measures to give people more flexible working hours. This flexibility is very important for women, so that they can have a balance between personal life and work life. And in research, it is one of the main things that inhibit women from wanting to go to the highest positions. When I became director of the Spanish National Cancer Center I met with all the women, the postdocs and staff scientists. They basically told me that they were not interested in being group leaders because they would have little time to do the things that they were interested in.

I think it is fundamental that you should have no concerns about being able to have your own family life or private life. So, we have implemented these measures to give people more flexibility, and it has been working very well. It does not reduce their productivity or their ability to perform.  

Q: Thinking back to your younger self, at the start of your career, is there advice you would give to young women today? 

Maria: When I started, I honestly never thought about whether I was going to succeed or not, or how difficult it was going to be. I think the important thing is to feel passionate about what you are working on and the questions you want to answer. In my case, I was lucky to find a space that is still fascinating for me today. So, if you work hard, and you really enjoy what you are studying, I think that is the best guide.

Q: What have you learned about overcoming failures and setbacks?

Maria: I think failures are necessary to learn about the subject that you are studying. But you keep working hard. You try to get advice from your supervisors or colleagues, and you try to solve the problem using different approaches. Scientific discovery is not easy. We are trying to discover things that are not known, so it is normal to fail, and of course I had many, many failures. But I find it fascinating that we’re trying to discover the unknown, and therefore we have to be very creative. I think I’ve been lucky because in the end, there was success. I have never abandoned a project. It has just been a matter of trying a different way and working harder on being creative. 

Q: One final question. You are a leader in many ways. In your eyes, what is the essence of leadership? 

Maria: Leading, to me, is helping to discover new things.

ng and controlling infectious diseases worldwide. She also served as Assistant Surgeon General of the United States and directed health programs at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private foundation. 

From there, her efforts shifted and expanded in scope. For 10 years Helene was CEO of the international humanitarian group CARE, this time focused on reducing global poverty, with special emphasis on creating opportunities for women and girls. And since 2017 she has been CEO of The Chicago Community Trust, where she works on catalyzing systemic change across a major American city. The Trust is one of the largest community foundations and its current strategic priority is “closing the racial and ethnic wealth gap” in Chicago. 

Helene has been named one of Forbes magazine’s 100 Most Powerful Women. She is known for combining a keen scientific intellect with personal passion and sensitivity. Here are highlights of her interview with World Woman Hour, in which these qualities come through. 

Q: Could you start by filling us in on your career path and how you came to be where you are now?

Helene Gayle: I grew up in Buffalo, New York, in a family that put a focus on academic excellence, but also on making a contribution to society. I think that influenced me and my siblings in terms of how we thought about what we should do and how we could make a difference in the world. I decided to do medicine because it’s a tangible skill that makes a difference in people’s health, and health is pretty fundamental because it enables people to work and to be effective contributors themselves. But while clinical practice in medicine allows you to help people one at a time, early in my career I recognized that I wanted to have an impact at a societal level. 

That’s when I got interested in public health, which looks at the unit of change, if you will, as populations versus individuals. At the Centers for Disease Control I really got to feeling like this was my professional home: to work on the issues of population health and disparities in health, not just with the medical toolbox, but by thinking more broadly about the things that influence people’s health and therefore their livelihoods and well-being overall. That focus on what we now call the social determinants of health led me to work on issues of poverty, both globally and in the United States, which resulted in my leading CARE. And now, here at The Chicago Community Trust, we’re focused on issues of economic inequity and how they are real drivers of so many other issues that are front and center in our societies.

Q: When you say “social determinants of health,” could you explain that concept a little more?

Helene: The social determinants are in many ways what make a difference in our health status. Much of our focus on health disparities looks at access to health services. But we now know that a large portion of the influences on people’s health are linked to things like the ability to have a living wage, access to high quality education, a clean environment, public safety, and a lack of violence. All these things, particularly education and income, are such huge drivers that they probably make up 60% to 80% of what determines people’s health outcomes.

Q: What are some of the most pressing problems you see women facing in health care?

Helene: Not just here in the United States but around the world, oftentimes women put their health needs on the back burner. Women are caregivers; they’re the ones who nurture families and communities, and often they don’t put their own needs first. Think of everything that women might go through in a lifetime—from bearing children, to being mothers and caregivers, while at the same time more women are entering the workforce. The question is, how do we make sure that women have the support they need to be healthy at all phases of the life cycle, and in the multiple roles they play?

Q: Could you speak to the ways in which you see women and girls disproportionately impacted by health issues? 

Helene: Clearly issues related to reproduction and sexual health are huge. But increasingly, so are other issues, whether it’s cancer or heart disease. There’s a whole range of things that disproportionately impact girls and women, because of the biological uniqueness of our gender but also because of social status. HIV and AIDS, as well as other sexually transmitted diseases, have disproportionately impacted women around the world because of their social vulnerability. So we have to look both at the biological factors and at the social issues that place girls and women at more risk.

Q: What do you believe the future of healthcare looks like, especially in regard to women and women’s health?

Helene: I hope that the future of healthcare prioritizes looking at people in their whole context and that we think about the many ways in which our health interacts with the social and economic realities of our lives. For example, we can’t separate women’s health care from child care. Also, we think about accessibility to health care in terms of putting clinics in certain neighborhoods, but it’s more than just a matter of where our clinics are located. It’s what services do they provide; who are the caregivers; do they understand the needs and culture of the population? And what are the hours? If you’re a working mother and health services are only available from nine to five, you’re not going to get to your routine care. We need to think about meeting people where they are in a more holistic way.

Q: Are there action steps that people can start taking today, to help? 

Helene: First of all, everybody can be informed about their own health issues and risks, and then they can spread that information to others. People are more likely to listen to the advice of somebody they know, who cares about them. So if you can talk to your friends, and help in ways like taking them to clinics when they are afraid of going, you’ll be an ambassador for why we all need to take care of our health—particularly from a prevention standpoint. So often, people only think about health when they’re ill or have a catastrophic issue. But if we think about how we’re taking care of ourselves in the first place, it is a critical way in which all of us can help to reduce preventable illness and death.

Q: In your experience, what have you learned about leadership and what it takes to be an effective leader?

Helene: I think leadership is a way of expressing your passion. For me, it has never been about wanting to be a leader. It’s about things that I feel passionate about and then finding others who are equally passionate and figuring out how we can come together in a way that moves the issues forward.

This is a shared model of leadership, with the understanding that when you’re the leader, accountability is yours. But it’s really about bringing a vision alive in a way that resonates with other people. And one of the most important attributes of a leader is the ability to listen and to take from that listening to the lessons that others can offer. We’re all better leaders when it is not an individual endeavor, but when we’re bringing together the best that people have to give.

Q: In your career, you’ve done so many different things, on such a vast scale. Did you see this as your path when you first started out?

Helene: I never would have imagined, when I started a career in medicine, that one day I would lead a global poverty-fighting organization or a community foundation. But I feel that keeping options open, which are linked to the things that matter the most to me, has always been rewarding. The next right step always seems to present itself. So, when people say you should have a five-year plan or 10-year plan: I’ve never had one. I have just been guided by the things that matter to me: my commitment to social justice and equity, and the issues linked to that.

Q: Out of all the skills you’ve developed, what would you say is your superpower?

Helene: I think my superpower is connecting the dots. Between issues, and between people. 

Q: If you could go back in time and give your younger self advice that you wish you had gotten, what would you say?

Helene: Be willing to be more vulnerable and to not feel like you’re held to a standard of perfection. I think a lot of us, particularly girls, are given the idea that we’ve got to be perfect because we can’t let others down. But sometimes that can stand in the way of true, authentic growth. 

I think we all learn better when we make mistakes and are able to embrace our failures and learn from them. It’s similar to what people are talking about when they say to “fail fast.” We’re all afraid of failure, but we need to learn from the failures and keep moving. So I think the more we can be vulnerable, the more we can accept our imperfections, the more we will learn and continue to evolve.

babies to approximately 18,000 women … and that is far from all. 

In Kenya, where she has spent key parts of her career, Marleen did pioneering research on HIV/AIDS with a focus on how the virus impacts women and childbearing. In Belgium, her native country, she founded the Ghent University International Centre for Reproductive Health (which now has branches worldwide), and served as a Senator in the national Parliament. Marleen also held a high post at the World Health Organization, directing WHO’s global programs in Reproductive Health and Research. She has been back in Kenya since 2016, at the Aga Khan University in Nairobi, where she heads the Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health. 

That’s quite a track record for someone who, in her university days, had a professor tell her that a woman shouldn’t study to be a gynecologist. As Marleen recollects, “He said, ‘You will have a family, who will take care of the children?  Why don’t you do something you can do from 9 to 12 so that you can dedicate your time to your family?” As it turned out, Marleen was able to be a wife and a mother while also forging a remarkable career. She believes that women’s health and women’s equity must go hand-in-hand — a view she advocates with good humor but with firm conviction. Here are excerpts from her interview with World Woman Hour. 

Q: Could you tell us a little about your life’s journey and how you came to be where you are now?

Dr. Marleen Temmerman: As a young girl I was always interested in sharing things and asking questions. Why is there so much inequity? Why do some people have more than others? I was passionate about solidarity and fighting inequity and it actually became the Leitmotiv throughout my journey. 

I wanted to go to the university, which was not often done by girls from the middle class back then in the seventies so I had to fight to convince my parents to allow me to go. Then later, after I finished my training in gynecology, I was intrigued not only by how best to care for the patient but also by health systems in operation so I undertook graduate studies in public health. 

I was invited by a good friend, Professor Peter Piot [a renowned microbiologist], to work with him around a strange disease that had come up in the 1980s. He was looking for somebody to join a research team in Kenya. My dream had been to go to developing countries and there was a need to study this new disease, HIV/AIDS. The research question at that time was, can women be infected with the virus, and if so, can it have an impact on pregnancy and on the baby? I went to Kenya, together with my husband, and although we have lived in other places since then, we kept going back to Africa, to Kenya and Mozambique over the years. And now here we are again in Kenya, where I’m leading the research center in Women and Child Health.  

Q: Why are you so passionate about solving problems for women, especially in health care? 

Marleen: It’s really working with women in all aspects of life, throughout their life course—young children, adolescent girls, pregnancy, family planning, older women. And whether you look at it from a health perspective or a rights and equity perspective, there is still a lot to be done. 

Think of the area of reproductive rights. Can you imagine that it was only in 1994, less than 30 years ago, when the world for the first time even agreed on the terminology of “reproductive rights”? On what it mean for a girl or a woman to have the right to decide how many children she wants, when, and with whom? It’s so basic. And yet 30 years ago we had to fight for it.

Even now, in many parts of the world—like here, where we live—for a lot of girls it’s only a dream. 

So progress has been made, but a lot needs to be done. And that’s why every day I love to continue this work, along with many wonderful partners, allies, colleagues, and friends. 

Q: It’s often said that women are disproportionately affected by health problems. Why is that so, and what are the solutions? 

Marleen: When you look at sexually transmitted diseases, for example, it’s the women and girls who suffer more. STDs can lead to ascending infections and a lot of complications, including infertility or cervical cancer and other diseases that are treatable or preventable, but which are making a lot of victims in this part of the world. So it’s always the girls and women who are kind of badly treated—by nature, by society, by the rights and the agency they are able to have. Their health care is often provided by governments or religious groups limiting their access to health, education, and the ability to reach their full potential.

In many countries, education is still a problem. In Kenya, the new Constitution of 2010 includes that all children go to school. That has really had an impact, because now more girls are going to primary school and secondary school. They continue their education, they participate in the workforce, and that is the beginning of change. So, education and health are really key to achieving equity, and to the development of girls and women.

Q: Many times in your life you’ve had to fight to move forward with your career and your work. What have you learned about overcoming failures and setbacks?

Marleen: Falling down is not failure. It’s just a thing that happens. Failure is not standing up again. You just have to say OK, what can I learn from what happened, and how can I do better?

And not only “I,” but how can we do better? In order to change society, you cannot do it as an individual. You have to find your friends, your partners, your family, and think, how can we do it? An African proverb states “ it takes two to make a child and a village to raise a child” we are all part of that global village and together we can be the change!

To me, this is the most important point. It’s about us. How can we develop not only that one single woman or girl or boy, but do it together as a group, as a community? As a society, how can we do better?

Q: Can you share a story about “doing better” in this way? 

Marleen: It’s not a fun story but I would like to tell it. When I first came to Kenya for my research, in the 1980s, I worked in public health maternity here in Nairobi Pumwani Maternity Hospital. I lost my heart in that place. We had about 80 to 100 deliveries a day, in very difficult conditions. At the time, I was pregnant myself, so you look at things a bit differently when that is the case. And I was confronted with a young girl, 14 years old, who died on arrival. She had been in labor in a slum area, without anyone taking care of her until finally, somebody brought her to the maternity ward. She had a ruptured uterus. The baby had passed on already and we couldn’t save the girl, either. 

In my life I have done so many deliveries that I don’t remember them all. But unfortunately, I had 72 girls or women who died in my hands, so to speak: many from the complications of unsafe abortion, and many very young girls who should have enjoyed their childhood instead of getting pregnant. Those I will never forget. Of course, you can be sad about this. On the other hand, it has given me the motivation to say, “This cannot happen any longer.”

 So, for many years, I have been trying to change the systems—and again, not alone. In that same maternity ward where the girl died, health care providers, nurses, doctors, and everyone has invested a lot. And after all these years, in this particular facility, care has improved a lot. We still see some women dying but thankfully less frequently. In the past, we had at least two or three babies every day who didn’t survive, and now that is the exception. As I said, we are making progress but there is still a long way to g

Marleen: We need more women leaders not only in health care but everywhere….

One of the biggest problems is that so many women are still dying in pregnancy, in childbirth, abortion, or postpartum. Maternal mortality, as we call it, is really an injustice for girls and women. They need good quality care, but it’s not only about the care. They also need the right to use the care. Like here in Kenya, we see so many teenage pregnancies, with very young adolescents. We need to work for the right to avoid being pregnant when you are 13. The right to access family planning, sexual education—the right to knowledge. So, it’s more than simply health care. It’s the whole picture of equity and rights that has to be interwoven with health care.

Q: What can all of us do to help?

Marleen: I think that all of us can be part of the change. If you believe that women and men are equal, that we have the same rights, then fighting for the same rights for all individuals is something that all of us should contribute to. Whenever you see injustice, or a negative situation, don’t turn away from it. Keep on fighting for a better world. For girls and women, men and boys.

Q: One last question. If you could be said to have a superpower, what is it?

Marleen: My superpower is multitasking. Being somebody who works in a group, in a community. And somebody who doesn’t give up. Who doesn’t take no for an answer!