“A female leader is always stereotyped as the Mother, the Puppet, the Iron Lady or the Lover”

After heading the Swedish Association for Communication Agencies (Sveriges Reklamförbund) for some years and soon starting the prestigious job as head of the Swedish Film Institute, Anna Serner has got a good insight into life as a female leader in Sweden. During a short visit to Zambia she held a lecture on female leadership in Sweden and the picture she paints of a country famous for its gender equality is rather gloomy

- Only 18 percent of the board members in stock market companies in Sweden are women. There is an unconsciousness about gender inequality that still is a part of the structures of the Swedish society.

She started the evening by showing a new Swedish movie, “A thousand times stronger”. The movie is about a young Swedish student who starts in a Swedish school after living abroad for many years. She is confronted with very the traditional gender roles amongst her new class mates with loud and dominating males and females trying to please their environment by acting like quit Barbie dolls. When she tries to change theses patterns she receives fierce resistance, not only from the boys but also from the girls and the teachers.

The movie paints a rather gloomy picture of the lack of gender equality in Sweden. According to Anna, a women who wants to become successful as a leader has to be aware of these, often hidden, but still strong structures.

- A female leader is more or less automatically being labeled with one of four fixed roles: the Mother, the Puppet, the Iron lady or the Lover. It is very difficult to change these expectations but if you are aware of them you have a better chance of being successful as a leader.

As head of the Swedish Association for Communication Agencies she felt forced to use her “female charm” to be fully accepted as a leader. When her male colleagues greeted her with words like “How beautiful you are today”, something that no one would say to a male boss, she just smiled and said “Thank you”. She was also expected to make inquires about her colleagues families when she greeted them in the morning.

- If I would not have accepted these expectations as a female leader I would have been seen as an Iron Lady and that would have made my job very difficult.

According to Anna the traditional gender structures are still alive in Sweden but nowadays people are not aware of it. Women in Sweden spend as much time at work as men but the women still takes care of the family after work to a much greater extent compared with their male colleagues.

- Women hesitate to take leading positions in companies because of this. At law school for example, where I studied, 50 percent of the students are women and generally speaking they have better grades than then male students. But after university women disappear. In the fancy law firms the majority are men. Women take jobs in the public sector with more regulated working hours to be able to take care of the family and household after working hours.

According to Anna there is a structural problem in society that needs to be addressed and it will not be solved by itself. The only solution, at least temporarily, is legislation.

- We have environmental laws, labor laws and many other laws that society has been forced to put in place to change attitudes and behavior in society. Gender equality also needs help from the law.

Johan Norman

”The most important thing is not to win, it is to beat the Swedes!”

This now legendary quote from the Norwegian ambassador Arve Ofstad at the dinner can sum up the Nordic Sports day in Zambia 2011, second year running.

And win they did the Norwegians. With a big margin over all the other Scandinavian countries. Still it is clear that Sweden captured the finest medal of them all, the fair play price. The teams from the different Scandinavian countries contained a big variation of contestants. The Olympic team from Norway was flown in whereas Finland, Denmark and Sweden took whatever bureaucrats and desk jockeys they had available in Zambia.


Yet the important thing is not to win, it is to participate.

The whole day was a nice day out and a chance to mingle around sport gear to meet other Scandinavians and compare the scandi muscles. The morning started out with the whole crowd taking part in a Nordic Zumba on the football grounds.

The country with most contestants won the part. Congratulations Sweden! Following games was football, swimming, volleyball, tug of war and boot throwing, relay among some. The day ended up at the Danish embassy with a nice dinner, dance and price award.


Suanna Knyphausen

Zambian artist, Stary Mwaba

Stary Mwaba has been drawing and painting his whole life. He is self taught and has no art schooling. A French missionary woman, who fell in love with his way to paint, offered him a job as an art teacher.
”She told me to teach what I do and how I do it”. When Stary came to Lusaka he joined the artists at the Henry Tayali Gallery but is since many years to be found at Rockston Workshop and Gallery on 27 Elm road in Woodlands which he at present time shares with two other artists.
Stary Mwaba was born in 1976 in Chingola in the Copperbelt. The family moved soon after to Kasama where he grew up and lived until he was 21years old. He then moved to Lusaka and has now spend 13 years in the capital.
When Stary was 18 years old his father passed away and after a long time of illness his mother passed away four years later. He was especially attached to his mother. During the time of his mothers illness Stary was not able to sleep at all so to cope with the distress Stary stayed up every night painting in the light of a candle. To convey feelings, anger, thoughts, sorrow, distress and also happiness through art is something that Stary is doing himself when painting but wants to focus more on and help others do. He has been involved with refugee projects together with UNHCR and he goes regularly to an orphanage run by a polish nun close to Chaminuka Lodge in Lusaka.
In 2004 Stary won ‘the British Commonwealth Award for Arts and Crafts’ which took him to an international workshop in Trinidad and Tobago.
Stary has since participated in a number of exhibitions and international workshops, which include the Watermill Centre, ’a laboratory for performance’ in New York, The Caribbean Contemporary Arts in Trinidad and Tobago, Braziers International workshop in London. His solo exhibitions include the “Freedom in Transition” at Lusaka National Museum in 2008, “Solace of a migrant” in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2009, “Crossing Over” at Caribbean Contemporary Arts, in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago 2005 and Museo di san Salvatore in Lauro in Rome 2010.
In his paintings he, most often, combines reality with abstract people and objects. You can also find typical Zambian elements such as people, buildings and even chitenge fabric. Some of his paintings are for sale at the art centre at the Tiyende Pamodzi Theatre at the American International School or you can visit his workshop ‘Rockston’ in Woodlands. This humble artist is a true Zambian at heart but my guess is that he will be very busy travelling the world in the future.

Bodil Sörensen

Fabulous crayfish party at the Swedish School

40 kg of lovely dill smelling crayfish, sixty guests, plenty of snapsvisor, a few bottles of vodka and a great atmosphere.


That’s how the crayfish party at the Swedish school on 1 October can be summarized.

And we are already looking forward to next years´ crayfish orgie at the Swedish school.

Impressions of Zambia – “Yes, we live in a compound”

“Lusaka, Zambia, you said? That’s where you’ll be living for a couple of years? You will be trailing behind your wife again... Interesting – so, in Lusaka, do all the expats live together in compounds?”

Before leaving that very normal Swedish suburbia life in Stockholm, the above is in fact similar to discussions I had on more than one occasion with Swedes having experiences of living abroad, in hardship areas.

Well, after a few weeks, months or years in Lusaka we know, don’t we? Or do we actually?
Obviously, here in Lusaka the word “compound” would not refer to a gated and guarded, only for expats and their families kind of area, like it would for example in Dubai.

Thanks to an article in the first issue of a new weekly newspaper, The Lusaka Standard, we have an answer as to the origin of the word in the Lusaka city planning context. According to the article the word “compound” originates from colonial days in the 1930ies when the decision was made to make Lusaka a colonial capital. The “Garden City” was planned for white settlers. Members of the black population were only allowed to live in the city if they resided on the “compound” of their white employer. So, here in Lusaka the term “compound” actually refers to those informal city areas that grew out of the compounds of white settlers, where in fact soon the majority of the city’s population would live.

Now, I can look back with new insights at answering a hesitant “No” to the question: “Will you be living in a compound?”

N.B. “Compound” according to an old Swedish dictionary is a word whose closest meaning in a city planning context is “läger”, meaning camp.

Gustaf Engstrand