Leading To Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook For Women

by Mahnaz Afkhami, Haleh Vaziri

This work is based on a conceptualization of leadership as horizontal, inclusive, and participatory. The alternative leadership model responds to the need for leaders who aspire to create egalitarian, democratic societies based on collaborative decision-making and gender equality.

Women's groups in Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe are using the manual to help participants hone their skills for women's rights advocacy. A participant from Liberia described how she overcame intimidations from fellow cabinet members, and went on to implement major improvements to the ministry under her purview.

Published in English, Mahgreby Arabic, Assamese, Bahasa Indonesian, French, Hausa, Kyrgyz, Malay, Meiteilon, Shamy Arabic, Persian, Portugeuse, Russian, Shona,Spanish, Swahili,Turkish, Urdu, and Uzbek.

108 pages, Spiral-bound

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Mahnaz Afkhami is Founder and President of Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP), and Executive Director of Foundation for Iranian Studies both based in Bethesda, Maryland. She was born in Iran, spent her teen years and early adulthood in the U.S. and returned to Iran at age 27 to teach English Literature. She later became the first and only Minister for Women’s Affairs in Iran. She was exiled in the U.S. while on official business with the UN in New York during the Iranian Revolution. Afkhami is currently in the midst of writing a new book on the history of the women's human rights movement from a unique "South-South" pov.

Mahnaz’s leadership in the non-governmental, academic, governmental, international, and activist spheres has helped enable women in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia to make choices that impact their own lives and the lives of their families and communities.

She has authored and co-edited numerous publications, among them Muslim Women and the Politics of Participation (Syracuse, 1997), Faith and Freedom: Women's Human Rights in the Muslim World (Syracuse, 1995), In the Eye of the Storm: Women in Postrevolutionary Iran (Syracuse, 1994), Women in Exile (University of Virginia, 1994), and Women and the Law in Iran (1993). Among the training manuals she has co-authored are Claiming Our Rights: A Manual for Women's Human Rights Education in Muslim Societies (1996), Leading to Choices: A Leadership Training Handbook for Women (WLP, 2001), and Leading to Action: A Political Participation Handbook for Women (WLP, 2010), and Victories Over Violence: Ensuring Safety for Women and Girls A Practitioner’s Manual (WLP, 2012).

Afkhami has appeared on the BBC, CNN, and PBS and in numerous television and radio interviews on NPR, BBC Persian, VOA Persian and other international outlets.

Mahnaz currently resides in Maryland, USA with her husband Gholam Reza Afkhami. She has a son, Asef Babak Afkhami, and two grandchildren.