“Legalise policy statement on affirmative action”

Daily Graphic Pg. 11. Thurs. June 11/09

Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

The government has been called upon as a matter of urgency to initiate the process of legalising the 1998 Policy Statement on Affirmative Action (AA).
This would be in line with the global movement to promote good governance and leadership that allows equal participation in decision-making by both men and women to accelerate development.
Journalists drawn from five regions in the country: Greater Accra, Western, Central, Eastern and Volta, made the call at the end of a two-day workshop which was held on the theme “promoting greater visibility for women in leadership”.
It was jointly organised by the Women Manifesto Coalition, Women Media and Change and ABANTU for Development and was sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
The communiqué was signed by all participants “after having noted the contents of the Policy Statement on Affirmative Action of 1998”.
Among some of the recommendations made was a call on the government to put in place structures for the implementation of the said policy statement which includes the setting up of a Committee on Affirmative Action as stipulated in the document being referred to.
Participants also called on the government to institute measures to ensure the implementation of programmes on affirmative action by speeding up the process of ensuring 40 per cent representation of women in all advisory bodies as documented in the 1998 AA document.
They also called on the government to initiate action for 40 per cent representation of women in parliament as stated in the AA document and added that current efforts being made to amend the electoral laws to fund political parties should make it mandatory for political parties to ensure that 40 per cent of their parliamentary candidates are women.
Participants also called on political parties to ensure that adequate representation of women at district and sub-district levels of administration which had the target of at least 40 per cent representation of women was met.
They further called on the government to ensure that the decentralisation process in the country remained non-partisan and devoid of monetary influence.
They also called for the fulfilment of the promise to set up a Special Fund for Girls Education as stated in the AA document for the education and training of women and girls at all levels as well as do a national evaluation of the “Girls Education Programme” of the Ministry of Education.
Participants further urged the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC) to collaborate with the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to generate
gender disaggregated data to inform the process of increasing women’s participation in governance and leadership in the country.
To step up public education on affirmative action, participants called on political parties to introduce measures to encourage women to participate in politics and recommended that affirmative action be introduced to ensure that 40 per cent of office holders at all levels are women in order to fulfil the objectives of the 1998 Policy Statement on Affirmative Action.
They also called on parties to put up women parliamentary candidates in constituencies considered to be party strongholds or safe seats as well as step up political education to encourage more women to stand for election and also for the electorate to vote for them.
They finally called on political parties to make election processes very transparent and devoid of rancour and acrimony since that tended to discourage women from participating in politics.