Helmut Newton did not give up his passion for fashion photography even when he was an elderly man.

Over the many years of his colourful career, he built a reputation for his bold black-and-white images that graced the covers of leading magazines.

Although in many of his pictures women posed in their natural suits, Newton believed that he was showing their strength.

“I am a partisan for women,” he said in a documentary about his life and work. “You cannot photograph women unless you love them.”

Though he spoke these words many years ago, he could as well have been speaking for all men — and women — of our time who are partisans for women.

Indeed, this is an exciting time for women, both at home and abroad.

More than ever before, there is a growing number of them seeking leadership positions and knocking on the door of history, what with Hillary Clinton so determined to break the glass ceiling in her quest to become the first woman president of the United States.

Closer home, Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed has been nominated for the post of chairman of the African Union Commission.

Of the four candidates contending for the job, three are women.

If Ms Mohamed gets the job, it means she would be working with national leaders across Africa and would be in a position to help shape the destiny of many in the continent if she could get the presidents and their men to put the interests of their citizens ahead of their own.

It also means that she would be in a position that would prepare her to make a stab at being the UN Secretary-General in the not-so-distant future.

Speaking of the UN, the Guardian reported earlier in the year that among the 12 people most likely to succeed Mr Ban Ki-moon, more than half were women.

PROPITIOUS TRENDIt would appear that women are no longer shy to stake their claim to the top of the leadership hierarchy, even on the global stage.

And from the look of things, women everywhere are not about to run short of role models.

In the heated campaigns for the democratic party nominations that pitted Barack Obama against Mrs Clinton, the African-American poet, Maya Angelou, said that she was facing a serious crisis.