Taiwan, although many do not know it, is in the middle of the crucial week for women: the third annual Gro Brundtland Week of Women in Sustainable Development.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, 78, has been a leader — and inspiration — for more than four decades in Norway and globally. As a physician and public health specialist, she saw the connection early on between health and environmental and human development issues.
Even a brief rundown of her accomplishments is stunning: She served as Norway’s minister of environmental affairs for more than five years, led its Labor Party for 17 years, served three terms as prime minister for a combined 10 years and three months, and served a five-year term as WHO director-general.
Between her first and second terms as prime minister, the UN asked her to establish the World Commission on Environment and Development, while during her third term as Norway’s leader, her government sponsored the secret talks between then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and then-Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat that culminated in the 1993 Oslo Accords. She is a member of the World Council of Women Leaders and serves as deputy chair of The Elders, a group of world leaders founded by former South African president Nelson Mandela.
She and her husband, Arne Olav Brundtland, a political analyst, raised four children, sharing parental duties as they balanced their careers — and opposing political stances, as he aligned with the Conservative Party. Many might be tempted to describe Gro Brundtland as a woman who was able to “have it all”: a substantial career and a family, when for so many women it often ends up being a choice of one or the other.
However, just as she drew upon her father’s example of being both a physician and Cabinet minister for her political career, she has tried to be an example, telling Time magazine in 1989: “In the worst times I always thought: ‘If you get through this, it will be much better for the next woman.’”
She always had a lot of women in her Cabinets, and in her international work she has championed more participation of — and reliance upon — women.
Awarded the first Tang Prize for sustainable development in Taipei in 2014, she donated half of the NT$10 million (US$343,407 at the current exchange rate) research grant to a Kenyan nonprofit group working on wildlife and natural resources, and the other half to National Cheng Kung University to train female scientists and researchers from Taiwan and developing countries.
The university decided to establish the three-year Brundtland Award For Female Researchers project to recognize women younger than 40 who have earned a doctorate and followed her interests of sustainable development, equitable health systems and leadership.
The annual award gives five women — one Taiwanese and four from developing nations — the opportunity to spend a week in Taipei networking and presenting their research to a variety of groups.
The winners’ work has run the gamut from climate change, disaster management, medical education, child health, vaccines, AIDS and tuberculosis to drug delivery systems, neurobiology and health risk assessment. The 12 non-Taiwanese have come from the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Yemen, India, Uganda, Jordan, Kenya, South Africa and Malaysia.
Gro Brundtland Week began on Thursday and ends on Tuesday next week, with this year’s winners now in Taipei meeting Taiwanese scientists, officials and students, learning and educating.
However, under the original grant, this is to be the final year of the Brundtland Award. It should not be.
Some combination of funding needs to be found to continue this project, not only to continue to honor a truly inspiring woman and inspire young Taiwanese, but to honor Taiwan’s oft-repeated pledge to serve as a role model for public health development and healthcare for other nations — even if world organizations are not willing to have it as a member.
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