Political parties asked to remove barriers that discriminate against women
Ms Afua Gyapomaa, Programme Officer of Abantu for Development, a non-governmental Organization, has appealed to political parties to take adequate steps to remove barriers that discriminate against women in the country’s political development.
She suggested that they should examine party structures and procedures and remove all barriers that discriminate against the participation of women in politics.
Ms Gyapomaa expressed worry that though women constituted about 52 per cent of the country’s population, only a few of them participated in the political and decision-making process, due to barriers and discrimination against them.
“Unfortunately, power and influence in management and decision-making of political and economic processes for development continued to be exercised in favour of the less dominant male group, while women have less access to these opportunities, creating an imprint of young women increasingly rejecting institutional politics and its classical actors.” she emphasized.
Ms Gyapomaa made the call at a leadership capacity building conference for female students of the Teacher Trainees Student Association of Ghana (TTAG) at Akropong Akuapem over the weekend.
The conference, which was under the theme: “Building the capacity of women to influence decisions at all levels”, attracted female students from all the 38 Colleges of Education with few male students.
Ms Gyapomaa was of the view that one way to encourage women to be active in politics was to allow them to pay small amount of nomination fees for contesting parliamentary and other leadership positions of the parties.
She appealed to political parties to support women to contest for political positions at the constituency level, which would be easy for them to win power, in order to increase the number of women in Parliament.
Ms Gyapomaa asked women to involve themselves in decision- making in all spheres of national life and seek to improve their standard of living.
Apostle Dr Mrs Victoria Antwi-Wilson, official of Controller and Accountant General Department, said devaluing of women continued to hinder their progress because some of them had not been allowed to develop their unique potentials fully to improve their own lives, families and communities.
Mrs Angela F.Ahunu-Donkor, Head of Human Resource Management Department of the Ghana Education Service, Eastern Region, said though women contributed to wealth creation, yet their representation in national policy making remained below the minimum UN recommended threshold of 30 per cent.
She said if effective democratic practice should mean increased participation of women in decision-making and involvement of women in governance, then there was the need to equip women with requisite skills so that the could be able to take high leadership positions in all aspects of human life.
Ms Stella Gyimah Larbi, National Women’s Commissioner of TTAG, in a statement, said the conference was one of the promises she made to the students before she was elected into office, to support female students with skills to enable them to identify their roles and take up positions in society.
Source: GNA