THE Association of Tanzania Employers (ATE) has commended major strides in women's empowerment achieved so far through the Female Future Programme in Tanzania, which, among other things, aims to strengthen gender equality in the workplace.

The programme initiated in 2015 also targets improving women’s representation in management decision-making processes, drawing them to top positions in the private and public sectors as part of the efforts to ensure sufficient qualified women in all organisations and leadership positions.

Suzanne Ndomba-Doran, ATE's chief executive officer said at the tenth graduation of the programme held in Dar es Salaam yesterday that it has played a significant role in promoting business competitiveness for equal distribution of resources in the country.

According to her, the programme was initiated by the government in the National Strategy for Gender Development that builds on Tanzania Development Vision 2025.

For the past decade each year there has been an average of 45 participants, with the third phase having the lowest number (21) due to COVID-19 eruption and the tenth phase having many participants at 110.

"The trend of participants has been increasing and dwindling, but in recent years it has doubled: 2015 (36), 2016 (30), 2017 (21), 2018 (30), 2019 (36), 2020 (36), 2021 (44), 2022 (77), 2023 (73), and in 2024 there were 110 participants.

A total of 493 participants from the private and public sectors have been trained," said Doran.

She said ATE has trained 150 MPs of the Parliament of the United Republic and the Zanzibar House of Representatives. So the number of women who received this training is 642.

She asserted that since the main goal of the training is to equip women’s skills in leadership, 102 women have obtained high leadership positions, increased accountability and professionalism; 50 have been appointed to leadership positions, and six have found positions to lead various institutions.

"We have started negotiations with the Police Force, where the Chief of the Police Force has approved this training for women officers;

It is our hope that the Norwegian government through the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO) will support us together with our partners ESAMI," said Doran.

She said ATE has established a union of women who went through this training called Female Future Tanzania Network with the aim of honoring the slogan of 'Female Future Spirit - Making Each Other Better.'

"This is an important step in ensuring that through these networks women leaders continues to help each other and cooperate in their leadership journeys," she said.