Story: Mary Ankrah
The Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC) mark this year's International Women's Day with theGreater Accra Region launch of the African Women’s Decade (AWD) at Amasaman in Accra.
The AWD which covers the period of 2010 to 2020 present a renewed opportunity to speed up international gendwe equality obligations in order to alleviate rural poverty among women and girls, and promote the realization and improvement of women’s participation to national development.
It is in consonance with Ghana’s commitment to the principles of international and regional instrument on the promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment.
It is intended to provide stakeholders the opportunity to partner with MOWAC to develop strategies to achieve the goals and objectives of the decade in Ghana.
The AWD is also to encourage the government to increase resource allocated to gender equality programmes to improve the status of Ghanaian women at all levels.
This year’s celebration which was under the theme: “Connecting girls, inspiring future; preventing rural poverty” was focused on the rural girl and woman.
Speaking at the occasion, the Greater Accra Regional Director of the Department of women of the MOWAC, Ms Comfort Ablometi observed that poverty remains a massive and predominately a rural phenomenon in Africa with the most vulnerable people being women and girls.
She said this was because the rural women’s heavy work load on the farm and in the hosuehold limits their time and energy for other productive ventures yet they hold much knowledge needed to increase food security, prevent environmental degradation and maintain agricultural biodiversity.
Rural girls on the other hand she said suffer from gender-based discrimination. They face greater pressure than their urban peers, to adhere to traditional practices and customs and observed that early marriage and pregnancy limit their social networks and education, thereby putting them at the base of the academic ladder.
Ms Ablometi noted that if women are empowered to have legal rights to land and other property, access to market and financial services, Ghana would be amazed about women’s contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) annually.
In addition, the Regional Girl Education Officer of the Ghana Education Service, Mrs Gertrude Simpi-Amuzu maintained that to reduce poverty, education was essential for the girl child who through education would be able to read and write, contribute to discussions on development, control population growth by spending more time in school and take up high ranking jobs or become self-employed in various areas of the economy.
In order to reduce poverty, Mrs Simpi-Amuzu urged women to form groups to embark on economic ventures that could make them to be economically independent and this would promote the provision of the educational needs of their girls.
“Women should try as much as possible to cut down the cost of performance customary rites, especially, funeral rites, puberty rites and annual festivals. They should also minimise the purchase of personal item and channel the money on education of their children, particularly girls”.
According to Dr. Benard Coquelin, the UN representative in Ghana, rural women and girls make up one quarter of the global population yet they are held back to fulfil their potentials, and said if women had equal access to productive resources, agricultural yields would rise by four per cent, strengthening food and nutrition security and relieving as many as 150 million people from hunger.
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