Story: Mary Ankrah
THE Rector of the Law Institute, Mrs Hilary Gbedemah, has said that women’s participation in national governance falls short of the constitutional requirement.
The 1992 Constitution makes provision for 30 percent of women participation in the governance process but the status quo is below that minimum target.
She observed that women continue to be under-represented in all levels of government due to historical and cultural factor, lack of resources and political parties structure among others.
On historical and cultural factor, she explained that women were generally not taught to be acceptive and coupled with the relatively low educational background of most women; they lack the confidence to take political will.
Again, she said due to the low educational level of most women, they do not have the financial resources that are needed to go into politics and the legal regime do not really protect their properties.
Mrs Gbedemah explained that although in the past elections, several political parties were committed to fielding between 30 to 40 per cent women candidates, it was not achieved and consequently contributed to a decrease in women’s representation of 11 per cent following the 2004 elections to the current eight per cent women in parliament.
“Disproportionate gender representation is a challenge for Ghana and the lack of support for women who could not make it is also a critical area that needs to be addressed”, she added.
She also believed that the district assembly level needs to be strengthened and that when women start occupying political position from the district level, they would have the confidence, networks and the knowledge of the community and that would build them to attain national position in politics.
She made this known at a two-day training of trainers’ workshop in Accra organised by the ABANTU for Development in partnership with the Canadian Crossroad International dubbed “preparing women candidate for the campaign trail”.
The workshop, which was attended by women leaders from the 10 regions of the country, was intended to sharpen the knowledge of the participants to effectively participate in politics and replicate the knowledge to other women candidates in their respective regions.
It was also to enhance the campaign skills and strategies of women candidates in the upcoming election campaign.
Speaking at the workshop, the Director of ABANTU for Development, Dr Rose Mensah-Kutin, said Ghana needs an affirmative action as a strategy for increasing women’s participation in politics.
The affirmation action, she said, was a set of measures that needed to be adopted by government, public and private institutions such as political parties, educational establishments, corporations and companies to address the discrimination and exclusion of women in certain development goals.
“The only way to increase women’s representation in parliament and governance is through affirmative action given the inherent discrimination and inequality in the current political structure”, she stated.
She said the affirmation action would also make women to be equally represented and hence rectify the current gender imbalance in governance and therefore call on the government to pass an affirmative legislation and urged political parties to uphold their communities to a more gender-balanced field of candidates.
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