Daily Graphic (spread), Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
VICE-PRESIDENT John Dramani Mahama has called on the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to provide reliable data on gender in the country to help inform the government in its decision-making and policies.
“When you have produced the necessary data, we the policy makers can then have the needed input to prioritise and bring about the necessary changes,” he said.
The Vice-President made the call at the opening of the Second Global Forum on Gender Statistics in Accra yesterday. The forum was hosted by the GSS and sponsored by the United Nations Statisticians Division (UNSD) of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Bank, the African Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations Development Programme.
The forum, which brought together participants from across the world, is aimed at bringing gender statistics to the fore and also bridging the gap between regions and countries on gender statistics.
Addressing the gathering, the Vice-President said “you as statisticians need to do more to better inform policies; without you we will be shooting in the dark”.
He further observed that “without the relevant data it will be difficult not only to make a case for gender but also to justify any serious interventions”.
According to him, women are most vulnerable when it comes to policy formulation and therefore called on experts in gender issues to bring about any systematic change in the current social and economic systems.
Mr Mahama re-assured gender activists that the government was bent on fulfilling its campaign promise of filling 40 per cent of ministerial positions with women.
He said Ghana was making significant progress in the appointment of women to decision-making positions and mentioned positions such as Speaker of Parliament, Chief Justice, Government Statistician, acting Commissioner of Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast. He noted, however, that “we are seriously lagging behind in terms of decision-making”.
A Senior Demographer at the World Bank, Ms Sulekha Patel, said the Bank had a long history of working towards gender equality since 1980, adding that work on measuring and monitoring progress on the economic empowerment of women by the bank had started.
She said the Bank had identified some of the data gaps, and would need to collaborate with the United Nations and academia to define indicators, methodologies and data collection regimes.
The UNFPA country representative, Mr Makane Kane, said his outfit was supporting Ghana to undertake a trial census in March, which would be followed by a 2010 enumeration, saying that census provided the opportunity for countries to deal more profoundly with issues of gender, alongside other emerging issues such as migration and urbanisation.
The Chief, Statistical Planning and Development Section of the United Nations Statistical Division, Ms Francesca Perucci, said gender statistics was an indispensable tool for development, and noted that the lack of adequate data in that area was hampering development in many countries.
Mr Dimitri Sanga of the Economic Commission for Africa in an address said the commission was creating a gender desk to take care of gender statistics, saying that the ECA was motivated by the fact that most African countries had signed various agreements to make gender part of their agenda.
The Divisional Manager of the ADB, Mr Michael Mouyelo-Katoula, on his part said the ADB through its gender policies recognised women as active agents in economic development, adding that the Bank’s policy called for gender segregation to reduce poverty.
The Government Statistician, Dr Grace Bediako, said “too often we pursue our statistical programmes without regard to the changing needs of the users — our communities, our stakeholders, our constituents.
“In gender statistics, I believe many of us have not done as much as we should have.”
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