From activists and politicians, to CEOs and entrepreneurs – here are some incredible women to watch in 2024:
Xiye Bastida
Xiye Bastida is a 21-year-old climate justice activist and part of the Otomi-Toltec Indigenous community in Mexico.
From co-founding the Re-Earth Initiative to organizing Fridays For Future alongside other youth activists, Bastida is using her platform to highlight the intersectionality of the climate crisis.
She spoke at the World Economic Forum’s 54th Annual Meeting in Davos in January about her hopes for her generation to be the last one dependent on fossil fuels.
Amani Abou-Zeid
Amani Abou-Zeid was re-elected as Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy at the African Union Commission in 2021.
In her role at the multilateral body, she has advanced many programmes including the Single African Air Transport Market and the Broadband Commission for Africa – both focused on strengthening the connection of Africa in their own respective ways.
Abou-Zeid spoke at Davos, in a session titled Global Risks: What’s in the Mail?.
Wanjira Mathai
As Managing Director for Africa and Global Partnerships at the WRI, Wanjira Mathai uses her platform to address global issues such as deforestation and energy access.
Mathai currently serves on the Board of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and as a Leadership Council member of the Clean Cooking Alliance – a global network making clean cooking accessible to 2.3 billion people around the world.
As the daughter of Wangari Maathai – founder of the Green Belt Movement and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize – Wanjira Mathai carries on her mother’s legacy of a commitment to a better world.
Narges Mohammadi
Narges Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 in recognition of her “fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all”.
She is currently serving multiple sentences in Tehran’s Evin Prison – amounting to over 12 years imprisonment. She has since been sentenced to an additional 15 months of detention, believed to be a result of her human rights work inside the prison.
Her husband, journalist and activist Taghi Rahmani, called on world leaders at Davos to make women’s rights an “inseparable part of any agreements” they make with Iran.
Arancha González Laya
Arancha González Laya is the Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, and former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Spain, where she championed a feminist foreign policy.
In her advocacy for women’s economic empowerment, González was one of the founders of SheTrades – an initiative designed to empower women through greater integration in global trade and investment.
“At the end of the day, what we want is a society that is more solid,” said González on the Agenda Dialogues podcast at Davos last year.