Without physical and mental support I guess it is difficult for everyone to achieve certain goals in life.

With the help of another strong woman (my mother) I was able to develop myself professionally through the years. Shakun: As a single mum with a medical background, I never thought I would end up in my current position as GM of a company. Q: As an independent female professional, can you give an impression of what it was like for you to get to this stage of your career? It would be to denounce this phenomenon, this scourge which destroys the health of many people, especially Africans, and which brings so much money to the cosmetics industry! Finally, it would be to sensitize the population on the harmful effects of this degrading practice for black skin, which exposes it to many diseases, especially cancer. Salamata: Choosing to challenge in my profession would be, for example, refusing to distribute products that lighten black skin, these products are often targeted at women. There are many problems a woman can tackle if she is educated in order to become (financially) independent. But if I had to choose one particular challenge, I would choose access to education. Shakun: I believe that for women challenges are continuous and almost on every level- even more with the current pandemic. What does ‘choose to challenge’ mean to you in your career? This can be interpreted in many ways: we can choose to challenge gender stereotypes, or gender bias. Q: The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is ‘Choose to challenge’. We asked Shakun and Salamata about their experiences and challenges during their careers, and for their opinion on several gender-related topics. Meet Shakun Tewarie, who is the General Manager at Kersten Distribution in Suriname, and Salamata Konde, who is our agent in Burkina Faso. As part of the campaign to create more awareness on this subject, hereby we would like to spotlight two of our great agents and distributors as examples of great female leadership. With our focus on bridging the gap in access to medicines (closely related to SDG3), we are also focusing on SDG5: Gender Equality. IDA Foundation has identified five focus Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in its long-term strategy. Within the context of upcoming International Women's Day (IWD) on March 8, we approached a few of our female agents and distributors with some questions regarding gender equality.

Female agent models