“If you want to take the Western route, all you will get is rejection, frustration. Confrontation will never work,” said Banda, Africa’s second female head of state, while speaking at the Sheroes Forum for female African leaders in business and politics in Dubai today (May 9).

The former president described a women’s leadership training session in New York where she was given tips on being assertive, like standing up straight and looking people in the eye.

Compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the world, African women aren’t doing so poorly in political representation. Globally, women accounted for only 17.7% of the world’s government ministers in 2015. In Africa, that figure was 20%, according to Inter-Parliamentary Union, a nonprofit based in New York.