Gov't urged to execute Affirmative Action policy on women

A call has gone to the government to review and implement existing affirmative action measures for women.

Gender advocates have asked that government and its agencies, political parties and relevant public and private institutions should take actions that ensure and assure their active commitment to improving the current situation of women's low representation in politics and public appointive positions at all levels.

These, they argue, should be backed by resource provision, institutional support, capacity building and implementation of actions considered critical to achieving the goal of achieving gender equality.

Affirmative action is a policy deliberately designed to create equal opportunity to groups who have not only benefited from existing processes and structures but are affected negatively because of the situation.

Its objective is to provide a means to address a problem which has been consistent over a long period of time such as the low representation of women in politics and public positions.

In spite of the several UN Charters, Convention signed and ratified by Ghana that calls for 30 to 40 % female representation at all levels of power and governance it has not happened.From 1993 until 2008, there have been some achievements through the strong mobilization and advocacy role by women or gender-based civil society organizations.

However, the outcome of the 2008 general elections regarding women's representation sent a strong signal that more work with a different strategy is needed.

According Dr. Beatrix Allah- Mensah of the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana, Legon, it also implied revising the strategy of engagement with the key players including government, political parties and the women, among others.Speaking at a forum by WiLDAF Ghana in collaboration with Women's Manifesto Coalition in Accra on "Model Affirmative Action Policy", Dr. Allah-Mensah stressed that Affirmative Action Policy (AAP) is not synonymous with women advocacy but could be applied to wide range of issues and be targeted at different groups of people including the disabled, ethnic groups, geographical location and identified vulnerable groups.

She noted that in spite of arguments by opponents of AAP that it could be discriminatory and undermines women efforts to demonstrate their competencies, there are even stronger ones in its favour.

"It promotes the training, funding and selection of women candidates, helps increase women's representation and creates a platform for women to concentrate on substantive political issues rather than spending so much time ensuring they get into public and political positions".

Dr. Allah-Mensah added that it helps bring out the competencies and abilities of women and creates a platform for addressing problems regarding unfairness and unequal opportunities. Ghana has signed a number of global conventions and frameworks on gender and women issues.

The slow pace of success and recent political and public events necessitated the drafting of a policy with recommended proposals for discussion by different groups prior to its presentation to government and relevant bodies.

In the short-medium term, she stated that government must among other things strengthen MOWAC and its agencies with technical, financial and logistical support and adopt and implement gender budgeting, designate special fund from public or state funds to support programs to increase women's representation.

"Political parties must re-organize women's wing to be more integrated into the party structure, commit to selecting women to contest a selected number of their safe seats and support to the development of training manual for women leadership".

Dr. Allah-Mensah emphasized that as a long-term strategy there could be consideration for electoral reforms and constitutional amendments, establishment of a Women's Leadership Academy-identify young, promising and interested women for training to serve as a resource pool for future political and public position appointment or election.

According to her, the approach will be incremental and that the proposed affirmative action is not mutually exclusive-they build on each other and will be coordinated with similar actions with the contribution of all stakeholders.

Mr. Frank Bodza of WiLDAF gave a chronology of AAP campaign Activities; 1975: First Women Conference in Mexico to remind the world that discrimination against women continued to be a persistent problem, Ghana in 1975 establish the National Council on Women and Development (NCWD), 1985 Nairobi, Kenya World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the UN Decade for Women and 1995, Beijing Conference, China, which calls on governments to meet a 30% representation of women in political positions He said that since the establishment of Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs in 2002 government appointees in District Assemblies in 2007 was 1956, 1401 men and 555 women, indicating 28%.

"Total number of ministerial and deputy ministerial appointments in 2009 is 75; 60 men (80%) and 15 women (20%), where is the 40%? Only 11 women out of 166 were appointed as metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives. Out of 25 membership of the Council of State only 3 (12%) are women and 22 men (88%)."

He added there is only one woman regional minister against 9 men out of 10 and none on the Government Economic Advisory Council with total membership of 10, wondering if there is no women economist in Ghana.

He said the forum was one of the many advocacy activities under WiLDAF Ghana's governance programme, which aims at getting government attention to come out with a concrete affirmative action policy for women's participation in politics and governance.