Lessons learned from being only man in class

Mara Bolis arrived at the airport in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire last June — delayed, tired, and disheveled following a 20-plus hour journey from Boston. A security guard signaled for her to follow him through passport control and led her to a waiting SUV, assuring her that her luggage would follow. She sank into the back seat, eyes closed, looking forward to her hotel bed.

But when the car rolled to a stop, it was outside the gate of an elegant home. Glancing down at her jeans, sneakers, and cargo shirt, Bolis felt a wave of panic. It occurred to her that she was at the home of Patrick Achi, the former prime minister of the west African nation — and a former observer of her course.

Bolis’ road to Côte d’Ivoire began last spring semester. A fellow at the Harvard Center for International Development (CID), she led a seminar titled “Bringing a Gender Lens to Development Policy and Practice.”

While there are many drivers of inequality in the developing world, marginalization based on gender is a persistent cause. Part of the reason is because women continue to have less formal political authority — they make up only about 27 percent of parliamentarians around the world, so their unique needs and perspectives often go overlooked. Bolis’ course aimed to help leaders build the practical skills necessary to bridge that gap.

Achi arrived for a research fellowship at CID that semester. After stepping down from government in October 2023 to focus on his longtime role as president of the Regional Council of the La Mé region, he had come to Cambridge to research the factors slowing Africa’s development progress.

The former prime minister was planning for his own spring seminar, “Unlocking Africa’s Potential through Development,” which would provide insights into these challenges and explore strategies for overcoming them, and he decided to sit in on Bolis’ class as an observer.

After the first class, Achi approached Bolis and told her he’d enjoyed the class but felt uncomfortable as the only man in the room. (He would later reflect that this was the first time this had ever happened to him in a professional setting.) Achi didn’t want the other participants to feel they could not speak freely with a man in the room. He asked whether he should continue to attend.

“You should absolutely come back,” Bolis replied with a smile. “And now you know how most women in the professional world feel.”

Achi would not only return, he would soon become an integral voice in class and an advocate of gender equality.

“It was revelatory for him,” said Bolis. “In learning about examples of inequality in public life around the world, and how inequality on the basis of gender had personally affected many of the other students in the class, he grew increasingly energized by the prospect of what he could do to support women back home in La Mé.”

In May, Achi took the stage at CID’s Global Empowerment Meeting where, alongside former Jordanian Prime Minister Omar Al Razzaz, he spoke with PBS NewsHour’s Amna Nawaz on how he had advocated for women and girls during his time in office (including doubling the rate of high school attendance for girls by building schools walking distance from their homes) and what he would do differently now (a major lesson for Achi: Listen to women).

Achi reflected on his experience in Bolis’ course in an article for CID, noting that it was “instrumental in deepening my understanding of gender issues and made me realize that while many of us believe we are implementing effective gender policies, the actual awareness and prioritization of these is often significantly lacking.”

Achi and Bolis began collaborating on the development of a comprehensive gender strategy for the La Mé region. The work had three components: research to identify women’s needs as distinct from those of men (the first time the region had gathered sex-disaggregated statistics to inform their strategy development); a roundtable discussion, hosted by the La Mé Regional Council, of the key issues facing women in the region; and a training, run by Bolis, for elected and administrative officials to bring a gender lens to their policy and programs.

In June, Achi and Bolis initiated a research project alongside two HKS students, Femi Olonilua and Kotomi Odate, with the support of gender leaders and members of Achi’s La Mé team. The team went on to talk to hundreds of residents about what activities they felt would help women reach their goals. The HKS students facilitated focus groups and administered questionnaires, then worked to identify the key challenges facing women and develop policy recommendations to address them.

In July, Bolis arrived in Côte d’Ivoire, expecting to participate in a small, closed-door session with the Ministry of Women in the Economy to discuss opportunities and living standards for women and provide training on bringing a gender lens to policy and program development for La Mé regional officials.

This is how Bolis found herself at Achi’s home, surrounded by elegantly dressed people who, she was realizing, had waited until she’d arrived at 10 p.m. to begin their dinner. What Bolis assumed would be a private session turned out to be a much longer major event.

“When we arrived in La Mé the next day, I found a public ceremony with over 100 participants, including members of the press, elected and administrative officials from all levels of government, international donors, representatives from the World Bank and French Development Bank, and members of civil society and women’s rights organizations from across Côte d’Ivoire,” said Bolis.

She was brought onstage to give remarks. She noted, laughing, that working with Achi means always being on your toes.

Later, in a smaller, closed-door session, Olonilua and Odate presented their survey findings to the multi-stakeholder group. The two students talked about women’s aspirations in agriculture and commerce, their interest in learning about women’s rights, and the barriers they face.

Following the presentations, the group talked about their “vision for women’s empowerment in La Mé and took a hard look at exactly what was standing in our way,” Bolis said. “Like elsewhere in the developing world, the unpaid care work done by women in the region keeps them from engaging in economic activity and gaining financial independence. They lack safe and reliable transportation options. Many women were unable to secure permission to leave their homes alone. In parts of La Mé, women have an 80 percent illiteracy rate. We talked through these problems and their root causes. The conversation had an incredible energy.”

One problem the group identified is that many women in La Mé lack formal identification, which can lead to their being overlooked in economic or social programs. “Right then and there, we decided to have an ID drive. It’s rare that you can have a conversation with so many different players where everyone is ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work,” said Bolis.

Over the course of the rest of the week, Bolis led a gender-sensitization workshop for 50 elected and administrative regional government officials in La Mé, which was met with requests for more such opportunities by male and female participants alike.

Then Achi’s wife, Florence Achi, one of the few female mayors in Côte d’Ivoire, invited the HKS team to an event celebrating the region’s mothers where the mayor was the guest of honor.

Before they went, Mayor Achi’s team helped the HKS team obtain dresses in Ivorian fashion to befit the occasion. The event featured a parade of women’s associations, music, and dancing with hundreds of celebrants resplendent in a rainbow of colors and designs.

In closing, Mayor Achi gave a rousing speech, assuring the crowd that women could do anything they set their minds to — even become mayor — to an eruption of roaring cheers.

“Nothing could have prepared us for the moment the mayor pulled us in to join her in a traditional dance in front of all of the spectators,” Bolis said. “The audience was generous with their applause, considering our clear lack of experience with Ivorian dance.”

Since the July event, Achi’s gender-equity work in La Mé has picked up speed. This fall, La Mé’s Regional Council approved the country’s first-ever gender-responsive budget, which allots funding for gender initiatives across the region in 2025. Areas of focus include women’s rights awareness-raising, training on active citizenship, adult literacy classes, and enhanced support for agricultural production.

Women in the area have also expressed a strong interest in financial-inclusion initiatives. In response, the government has budgeted for increased investment in support of women’s savings groups, which are called AVEC (French for “with”), in Côte d’Ivoire, as well as training to help women use their phones for saving, lending, and transactional purposes.

The new budget “brought tears to my eyes,” said Bolis, who has wrapped up her time in CID but continues her work in gender-justice initiatives as a fellow with Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership.

“These initiatives will contribute to the financial resilience, well-being, and happiness of women — and men — across La Mé. They are the outcome of countless hours of work by our students to carefully untangle these complex issues, and by former Prime Minister Achi’s efforts to champion gender issues in a new and important way. They demonstrate the types of cross-border collaboration and joint learning that is made possible through an environment like Harvard. The joy of developing partnerships to create more equitable futures is why I do what I do.”