Forbes enlists Sheikh Hasina as one of the women leaders in fighting Coronavirus

The prestigious US magazine Forbes has highly praised Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and placed her in the list of successful women leadership for her sincere efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic in Bangladesh.

“Bangladesh, a country of some 161 million people, led by Sheikh Hasina, is no stranger to crises. She was quick off her feet standing up to this one, with a response the World Economic Forum called ‘admirable’,” Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, a contributor of the Forbes, wrote in an article in the magazine on April 22.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox in her article titled “8 (More) Women Leaders Facing The Coronavirus Crisis” lauded seven other female leaders of the world for their strides to curb the pandemic, saying that all the eight leaders deserve to be recognised for their efforts.

The seven other leaders are Singapore President Halima Yacob, Bolivia’s interim President Jeanine Anez, Nepalese President Bidhya Devi Bhandari, Ethiopia’s President Sahle-Work Zewde, Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, Namibia President Saara Kuugongelwa and Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam.

The article said Sheikh Hasina, the country’s longest-serving Prime Minister, started evacuating Bangladeshi citizens from China in early February.

“After the first case was diagnosed in early March, she closed educational institutions and nudged all non-essential businesses to go online,” it said.

The article said Sheikh Hasina harnessed tech, installing screening devices across international airports which screened some 650,000 people (of which 37,000 were immediately quarantined), something the UK still isn’t doing.

It said women now govern 18 countries and 545 million people globally. That’s 7% of the world’s population. (Exactly the same percentage, by the way, of women CEOs on the Fortune 500.)

The article said from Bangladesh and Ethiopia, to Georgia and Singapore, women are emerging into political leadership across the globe and this revelatory crisis is showing their talents.

“These leaders are the promising tip of an avalanche of talent waiting to be unleashed on the world. They are our collective return on a smart, 100-year-old investment (ROI),” it said.

The article said gender balancing our political and economic systems is a good use of the fruits of one of the triumphs of human ingenuity: equality.

“Our differences are delightful and impactful. We should acknowledge, leverage and use them – now! It might save us yet,” the article reads.

Earlier, the Forbes in its April 13 issue published the names of seven female leaders of the world who are successfully combating the COVID-19 pandemic in their respective countries.

They are German Chancellor Angela Merkel, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Iceland Prime Minister Katr-n Jakobsdottir, Finland Prime Minister Sanna Marin, Denmark Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen.