Mr Donkris Mevuta, the Executive Director of the Friends of the Nation (FoN) says, achieving the goal of women’s equal representation and participation in decision making processes is critical to realizing development aspirations.
He noted that efforts should be made to promote initiatives such as the Affirmative Action Bill to help advance the development and implementation of national plans.
“We, therefore, call on the government to reconsider its stance on the bill and make conscious effort to have it passed into law.”
Mr Mevuta, told the Ghana News Agency that women’s right and gender equality had seen some improvements in national life.
Some women, he added, have risen to higher positions in education, engineering, politics, among others and have had their voices heard in environmental sustainability initiatives and other critical sectors of the Ghanaian society and at the subnational level.
The Executive Director said FoN, continued to play its role in empowering women in areas such as fisheries, small-scale mining, cocoa, grains and cereals farming, and the petroleum sector.
Such areas also highlighted discriminatory practices that hindered women’s growth though the extractive sector was one of the vehicles to liberate women out of poverty.
However, the sector continued to see documented and undocumented norms that are detrimental to the economic, social, and financial freedoms of women.
“We call on the government to consider reserving 30 per cent of the Mineral Development Fund to women empowerment projects and same percentage of mining concession block in each mining district for women”.
In the cocoa sector, FoN has partnered other developmental partners to empower female cocoa farmers.
The Executive Director said despite these initiatives, there was still work to be done in the important role women played in the restoration of Ghana’s ecosystems and the need for avenues to empower women in creating a just society.
