Human Rights of Women
The Vice-President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, has stated that investing in woman is a positive venture that can yield great dividends in relation to the country’s development.
The Vice- President, who made the statement in an address read on his behalf by the Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs, Mr Juliana Azumah- Mensah at the opening of a three-day Commonwealth African Regional Colloquium in Accra last Wednesday, also recognised the significant contribution of women in society.
The colloquium, the second in the series was on the them ‘’Woman Leaders as Agents of Change’’.
It brought together woman in governance, representatives from civil society organisations (CSO), academia and the business sector to dialogue on how to champion the cause of women, through networking and unity.
The principal goal was to enable and advance capacities for applying leadership mandates effectively among women leaders, given the peculiar, structural and systematic barriers that challenge women differently from men when entrusted with leadership positions. The Vice-President said social activism in recent times has help to create a level of awareness on rights of women in recent times.
He, however, pointed out that the fact that women were the worst sufferers of poverty, climate change and domestic violence had not changed.
He said more needed to be done through advocacy and education to increase women’s membership in the country’s legislature to 30 per cent in line with the United Nation’s directive that a treashold of at least 30 per cent representation of women was needed for their participation in decision making to be meaningful.
Mr Mahama said the country’s commitment to help uplift the status of women was necessary for development, adding that the government was interested in promoting girl-child education and mainstream women in the country’s development process in line with the objective of Millennium Development Goal 3 (MDG3), which relates to promoting gender equality and women empowerment.
He said t=he was hopeful that more women would participate in the upcoming elections to take up leadership positions in the legislature and also in future local assembly elections.
The National Co-ordinator of the United Nations Women, West Africa, Dr Izeduwa Derex- Briggs, called for an increased participation of women in political party activities, stressing that women empowerment went beyond statistics and more needed to be done by African governments to back their claims to empower women.
The former Minister of Education, Mr Betty Mould Iddrisu, said political parties in the country could do better ‘’in pulling women up the political ladder’’. adding that political parties have the responsibility to nurture women along with their male counterpart right from the grass-roots level to the top.
She also expressed worry about the declining numbers in women in governance and attributed this to socio-cultural norms and gender biases, that affected women negatively.
Mrs Iddrisu challenged women leaders to take the initial step and play positive roles in promoting gender equaliy. The Deputy Secretary- General of the Commonwealth Secretariat, Mrs Mmasekgoa Masire Mwamba, said Africa women faced countless social, economic and cultural challenges in their societies.
She said in advocating gender equality, there was the need to train young girls and build the capacity of women to prepare them for leadership positions which they advocated.
She encouraged women to cultivate ambitions that would place them in decision-making position for their communities, localities and countries.
