Daily Graohic, Pg. 11. Saturday, March 07/10
Compiled by: Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
GHANA’s Fourth Republic can be considered as being more gender-friendly than any other regime in the history of the country. It has made history in many ways with the appointment of many females to top decision-making positions in the country.
The Speaker of Parliament, Joyce Adeline Bamford-Addo, who was born on March 26, 1937, is a retired Supreme Court Judge. She is the first female Speaker in Ghana. According to Ghana’s constitution, she is the third in the order of precedence in the country and comes after the President and Vice President of the Republic.
She became a Supreme Court Judge in 1991 from where she continued to dispense justice for more than 13 years until she retired voluntarily from active service in 2004.
There is also the first female Chief Justice of Ghana, Georgina Theodora Wood, who was born on June 8, 1947. She had her basic education at Bishop Girls and Methodist Schools, Dodowa. She then attended Mmofraturo Girls School, Kumasi, from 1958 to 1960. Georgina Wood's secondary education was at Wesley Girls High School, Cape Coast, which she completed in 1966. She proceeded to the University of Ghana, Legon, where she was awarded the L.L.B. in 1970. She then attended the Ghana Law School after which she was called to the bar.
She also did the Post-graduate Officers Training Course at the Ghana Police College. Georgina Wood worked with the Ghana Police Service as a deputy superintendent and public prosecutor for three years. She later joined the Judicial Service as a District Magistrate in 1974. She rose through the Circuit and High Courts to become the presiding judge of the Appeal Court in 1991.
She is a judge and also a former police prosecution officer. She is the first woman to occupy the position of a Chief Justice in the country.
She was nominated for the position in May 2007. On June 1, 2007, Parliament approved her nomination.
The first female Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Betty Mould-Iddrisu, until recently, was the Director of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Division for the Commonwealth Secretariat – a position she assumed in November 2003. She has a vast experience with the Ghanaian Ministry of Justice, specifically in administering various facets of intellectual property law, international law, human rights and gender in Ghana and the rest of Africa.
She was Chief State Attorney and head of the International Law Division of the Ministry of Justice. She established the intellectual property course and taught it on a part-time basis at the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, Legon, from 1990 to 2000.
The Director of Immigration, Ms Elizabeth Adjei, was appointed in September 2002. She is the first female Director of the Ghana Immigration Service. She joined the Service as an administrative assistant in 1988.
Ms Akua Sena Dansua was born on April 23, 1958 at Hohoe in the Volta Region. She is the Member of Parliament for North Dayi and is also the first female Minister for Youth and Sports.
She trained as a journalist and worked with the Weekly Spectator newspaper in Accra as the Features Editor. She took a prostgraduate course in Communication Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon, completing in 1990.
She was appointed the Minister for Women and Children’s Affairs by President J.E. Atta Mills in 2009 and moved to the Sports Ministry this year as the first female to occupy that ministerial position, which is largely perceived as the preserve of men.
She has been the Technical Advisor to the National Council on Women and Development, and Media Consultant to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)— 1995.
Other women have also achieved success in other fields, including Akua Kuenyehia. She was born in 1947 and has been a judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC), in The Hague, Netherlands since 2003 and until March 2009, she was the First Vice-president of the Court. She is one of three female African judges at the ICC.
She was educated at the University of Ghana, Legon and Oxford University and she has spent most of her professional career teaching at the University of Ghana, becoming the Dean of the Faculty of Law, and as a visiting professor at other institutions internationally.
She was the Dean of the Faculty of Law when she was elected as a judge. During her time in the university, she taught criminal law, gender and the law, international human rights law and public international law.
She is a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Ghana. She has experience as a solicitor, advocate and human rights expert, and in criminal law and procedure. She also has experience as an administrator and has expertise in gender and the law, international human rights issues and was a member of the Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Professor Ama Ata Aidoo, is a renowned Ghanaian writer and poet, who was born on March 23, 1942 at Abeadzi Kyiakor in the Central Region. She graduated from the University of Ghana in 1964.
She has taught in universities for many years in Kenya and the United States of America (USA). In 1974 she was a consulting professor to the Phelps-Stokes Fund's Ethnic Studies Programme in Washington.
She gained recognition as a writer with her first publication in 1965, “The Dilemma of a Ghost,” which she published when she was 23 years. She won the Commonwealth Writers Prize with her second novel, ‘Changes: A love story’.
In 1970 she wrote ‘Anowa: No Sweetness Here’. She later wrote ‘Our sister kill joy: Reflections from a black-eyed squint, in 1977. In 1982 she was appointed as the Minister of Education but after 18 months, when she realised that she couldn't achieve her aims, she resigned.
Among some of the books she authored are ‘Someone talking to sometime’, ‘The Eagle and the Chicken’, ‘Birds and other poems’, ‘The girl who can and other stories’. She explored the social conscience of her African peers through her writing, speaking, and teaching endeavours.
She has won many literary awards, including the 1992 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Africa) for Changes- A Love Story. She also won the Nelson Mandela Prize for Poetry in 1987 for ‘Someone Talking to Something’.
Prof. Abena Dolphyne, the first female Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Legon. She is also a former chairperson of the Methodist University College and a conference member of the Methodist Church.
She was a Professor of Linguistics and wrote two books in Twi (an Akan dialect in Ghana). The book introduces a non-Twi beginner to the spoken language. The Department of Linguistics at the University of Ghana, Legon, has its library named after her in recognition of the role she played as the first Ghanaian female professor and pro-vice chancellor of the University of Ghana. She is the Chairperson of the IDEG Governing Council.
Prof. Marian Ewurama Addy, a retired professor of Biochemistry, was in 2008 appointed the First President/Vice Chancellor of the Anglican University College of Technology (ANGUTECH), making her the first female Vice Chancellor in Ghana.
Prof. Addy had her basic education at the Government Girls’ School, Kumasi, now Yaa Achiaa Junior High School and the St. Anne’s Anglican School, Sekondi. Her secondary education was at the St. Monica’s Secondary School, Mampong Ashanti and the Holy Child Secondary School, Cape Coast.
She had her tertiary education at the University of Ghana, Legon in 1966, where she came out with a First Class Honours Bachelor of Science degree in Botany (Special, with Chemistry as ancillary), and the Pennsylvania State University, where she obtained Masters and Doctorate degrees in Biochemistry in 1968 and 1971 respectively.
Prof. Addy is a Professor of Biochemistry. She taught at the Howard University College of Medicine as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and the University of Ghana as a Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor and Professor at the Department of Biochemistry.
She was the Head, Department of Biochemistry, University of Ghana, Legon and First Head, Chemical Pathology Unit, Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research.
She was a Chair and member of a number of research and technical committees and a Director of Programmes, Science Education Programme for Africa (SEPA).
Prof. Addy taught at the Biomedical Centre, Uppsala University, Sweden, the Atlantic Veterinary College, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada, the New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York, the Foreign Faculty Mentor, and Minority International Research Training (MIRT) programme.
She is a member of the World Health Organisation ( WHO) Regional Expert Committee on Traditional Medicine, Chair, Policy Committee on Developing Countries of the International Council for Science (ICSU, member, Executive Committee, International Network of Engineers and Scientists and Advisors, International Foundation for Science, Stockholm, Sweden.
She has received several awards such as the Millennium Excellence Award for Educational Development, UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the Popularisation of Science in 1999, Africa-America Institute (AAI)’s Distinguished Alumna for Excellence in 1998 and the Marketing Woman of the Year, for marketing science in 1995.
She was the first Executive Secretary of the Western Africa Network of Natural Products Research Scientists (WANNPRES).
Her experiences in academia are mainly in teaching biochemistry, both basic and applied, to undergraduate, post-graduate, dental and medical students at the University of Ghana, Legon, and at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington DC. Her main area of research is the science of herbal preparations used by Traditional Medical Practitioners, especially their safety, efficacy and how they work.
She was a member of the Kwami Committee, a Technical Committee on Polytechnic Education set up by the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE), to study and make recommendations that would guide the NCTE to formulate policies and advise government on polytechnic education.
She was the first Quiz Mistress of the popular weekly televised National Science and Mathematics Quiz programme, primarily aimed at improving the learning of science and mathematics for secondary school students. She hosted the programme for seven years.
Prof. Takyiwaa Manuh, Director of the Institute of African Studies (IAS), University of Ghana, Legon. She was born in Kumasi, and was educated at the Wesley Girls' High School, Cape Coast, the University of Ghana (LLB (Hons), 1974), the University of Dar es Salaam (LLM, 1978) and Indiana University, Bloomington (Ph.D. Anthropology, 2000).
After her university education at the University of Ghana, Legon, she was appointed a Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies in 1979, and promoted Senior Research Fellow later on. She worked in that capacity till she left in 1992 for the Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, USA, for a Ph.D. in Anthropology. After her Ph.D. degree in Anthropology from that university, she was promoted to Associate Professor in 1997 and became Director of the institute in 2000. In 2005, she was elected a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was appointed a full professor in 2006.
She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Association of African Universities (AAU) and of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). She is also a member of the Governing Board of UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP), a Board Member of the African Gender Institute and a member of the Steering Committee of SEPHIS, the South-South Exchange Programme on the History of Development.
She was elected a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005 and has received a number of other awards and fellowships, including the University of Ghana’s Meritorious Service Award for 2007, as well as Ghana’s Order of the Volta (Officer Class) in July 2008.
In 2004, she was co-winner with Dr Kojo Saffu (Brock University, Ontario, Canada) of the USA National Women's Business Council Best Paper in Women's Entrepreneurship Award for their paper on “Strategic Capabilities of Ghanaian Female Business Owners and the Performance of Their Ventures,” presented at the 49th Annual Meeting of the International Council for Small Business (ICSB), Johannesburg, South Africa. She is active in the women’s movement in Ghana.
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