In May 2019 the Christian Science Monitor profiled Meaza Ashenafi after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appointed her as the first woman to lead Ethiopia’s Supreme Court, part of a wider wave of women named to top posts.
Meaza was already known as a women’s rights lawyer and activist before she took the bench leadership role. The appointment was sold internationally as proof of reform, while domestic observers asked whether a progressive chief justice could change a court system still shaped by politics and weak enforcement.
Gender parity at the top does not by itself deliver independent courts. It does change who holds the gavel and how rights cases are publicly framed.
Kept as rights and governance archive, the Monitor profile dates Meaza’s elevation and the early branding of Abiy Ahmed’s government as a champion of women in high office.
Sources: Christian Science Monitor