Giving Compass' Take:

• Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, a former deputy president of South Africa, called to double the number of gender equal cabinets over the next year.

• How might we see policy changes with global development issues if more women had decision-making power?

• Read about SDG 5: why gender equality matters. 

Countries holding elections must make it a priority to put equal numbers of women and men in top positions, the head of U.N. Women said, as she revealed an ambitious drive to more than double the number of gender equal cabinets over the next year.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, a former deputy president of South Africa, said balanced cabinets made better decisions not just for women, but for broader society and economies, and provided role models for the next generation of both girls and boys.

Currently only 11 countries have gender equal cabinets but Mlambo-Ngcuka said she hoped to see 25 by September 2020 — and believed African countries could lead the charge.

"We want our girls to grow up aspiring to be leaders — to lead their countries, companies, institutions," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of Women Deliver, the world's biggest gender equality conference.

"When girls see someone who's like them — that's when the penny drops, 'I can do this too,'" she said.

Creating 50:50 cabinets would also help boys understand "that diversity is (a) more normal way of life than exclusion."

Read the full article about gender equal cabinets by Emma Batha at Global Citizen.