Young women need mentorship, encouragement to hold key government positions
The Ashanti Regional Director of the Department of Gender, Ms Augustina Gyamfi, has called for positive steps to help mentor and encourage more young women to have the opportunity to occupy key positions in the country.
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That, she said, was in line with the 17 points on women empowerment strategy, adopted by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection.
According to her, the ministry’s goal was to ensure that by the year 2030, more women would occupy various positions in government, especially, in the ministries of Finance & Economic Planning, Education, Health, Justice & Attorney-General and above all, having a woman as President of Ghana.
Speaking at a “Women and Peace Promotion” programme organised by the Young Women Christian Association (YWCA) for young women in Kumasi, she emphasised the importance of leadership training for female youth in the country.
She said in spite of Rwanda being a war-torn African country, it had more females in Parliament, saying that it was time Ghana also boasted more females as legislators and ministers.
She noted that premarital sex was one of the major causes of distraction for women who aspire to higher positions in government and decision-making process as a whole.
Virgin clubs
For that reason, she said the Department of Gender was collaborating with the YWCA to have a number of virgin clubs in basic schools to nurture young females to flee from premarital sex, and rather focus on their education for a better life.
She said the virgin club, as a project, was being extended to second cycle institutions to continuously inculcate in young females, the need to stay focused and aspire to become part of the decision-making process.
She commended the leadership of the YWCA for the programme and called for more collaborative efforts to strengthen the gender-based agenda.
Employable skills
The National President of the YWCA, Mrs Rosemond Abraham, said the idea of training young women, particularly Christian youth, and to bring them together to empower them for employable skills, was born in 1952 at the inception of the YWCA.
She indicated that World YWCA, which is a global movement working for women’s empowerment, leadership and rights in more than 120 countries and 20,000 local communities, saw women and girls empowerment as a positive way to change the world, and through its Power to Change Fund, had financially been supporting YWCA Ghana, for the past 65 years to organise training for young women.
She added that about 200 girls would soon be trained in dressmaking, home management and secretarial service, indicating that YWCA Ghana was partnering the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) and traditional communities to take up the task of boosting employable skills.
She, however, asked the young women to conduct themselves in focused, respectful and humble ways as they worked in collaboration with their male counterparts in society.
The General Secretary of YWCA, Ms Angelina Bannerman, described the December 2016 elections as crucial, saying it behoved young women to advise young men, some of whom were either used by politicians or hid behind the youth as politicians to cause violence before, during and after elections, to adopt positive attitudes.
The Abeasehemaa, Nana Akyaa Tiwaa, who chaired the function, challenged young women to take a bold step in changing the life of society towards a positive direction and also ensure peace as the nation prepared to go to the polls.