Story: Mary Ankrah
THE Empretec Business Women Forum (EBWF), a gender advocacy group, has called on the government to create more opportunities to enhance women’s economic empowerment.
According to EBWF, there was the need for the government to offer women with purposeful opportunities for their advancement in the workplace, markets and communities in support of the national effort to build a healthy economy, strong society and sustainable environment.
The President of EBWF, Mrs Paully Appea-Kubi, made the call at an EBWF stakeholders meeting in Accra on Tuesday. The meeting was on the theme: “Gender Equality in the Business Environment: The Way Forward”.
The meeting brought stakeholders together to deliberate on the gaps that retard the growth of women’s businesses as well as sensitised them on the need for reforms geared towards women’s economic empowerment.
According to Mrs Appea-Kubi, women have always been the victims of gender discrimination and their traditional roles as child bearers and home keepers had kept them from being major decision-makers and contributing to political and economic matters as compared to men, stressing that women in business were mostly affected by various challenges that affected their businesses.
She asserted that countries that invest in promoting the social and economic status of women have lower poverty rates, adding that there was natural ability of women to transform families and communities from a state of poverty into a state of prosperity due to the multiple task they play in society.
She also stressed the need to mobilise businesswomen under one umbrella body for proper networking and to provide them with a united voice that will enable them to partner with the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC).
Mrs Appea-Kubi said that was necessary to enable them advocate for the resolution of gender issues relating to the business environment, such as inadequate resources for women, and to strengthen the gender desks in all the metropolitan and district assemblies.
The National Programme Coordinator of the United Nations Women, Mrs Afua Ansre, observed that opening opportunities to women in business in all sectors of society was strategic and would be good for equity growth and sustainability in the long-term.
She announced that during the Rio+20 Conference held in Brazil in June this year, emphasis was placed on the need to empower women in business and for that reason, world leaders, business and civil society organisations reached an agreement to advance the social, economic and environmental factors that relate to sustainable growth and development.
“When women are empowered to earn income, they would invest back into their families and communities. This would reduce hunger, poverty and malnutrition and improve on the standards of health, education and well-being of women”, she added.
She observed that despite the major role of women in agriculture in providing food, they do not enjoy equal access to productive inputs and that limited their output in the markets.
“If women were provided the same access as men to fertilisers, seeds and tools, national agricultural yields would rise between 2.5 and four per cent and there would be 100 to 150 million fewer hungry people in the world”, she said.
Mrs Ansre called for the removal of all barriers that limited women’s opportunity and participation in business including access to finance and new technology.
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