After little improvement in decades, the country now hopes dedicated support networks can encourage female leadership. Dr. Mala Apparaju estimates that she went to more than 100 different job interviews before she was finally appointed principal of a school in a rural district of Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa. It took 40 interviews just to become the head of a department. Sometimes, she remembers, she would arrive for the interview and face a panel of seven men. “Needless to say,” she says, “I didn’t get those jobs.” Finally, around 2002, she got the gig. Around the same time, Agnes Mazibuko — who’d been rising through the teaching ranks for 24 years — managed to land a job as principal of Ifalethu Primary School in rural Mpumalanga, the first woman in her district to hold the job. She was, she says, the best-qualified candidate, with a stellar track record during her eight-year tenure as deputy principal. Still, she describes it as “a miracle” that she got the job. Mazibuko’s and Apparaju’s stories of perseverance are inspiring, but even today, they are all too rare. | 
