The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has inaugurated a project aimed at using the media to project women for their good work and improving their visibility in public discourse in the country.
The project, known as "Increasing Women's Voices And Participation In Public Discourse In Ghana,” also seeks to influence gender policies and practices among the media and political parties in Ghana in order to increase the participation of women in public discussions and debates.
Under the project, which spans from October 1 to December, 31 2013, 24 radio stations selected from eight regions, namely Northern, Upper East and West, Greater Accra, Volta, Eastern, Ashanti, and Central regions, would be monitored during the period of implementation of the initiative. As part of the project, 24 monitors would be trained to build their capacities on how to use a media-gender equality monitoring instrument to monitor women's participation in programmes on the selected radio stations.
The project is being funded by Ibis-Ghana and jointly supported by the West Africa Network for Peace Building (WANEP) and the Foundation for Security and Development in Africa (FOSDA).
At a training workshop in Tamale for the 24 monitors, the Deputy Executive Director of the MFWA,Mr Sulemana Braimah, said the project was also working with five main political parties—the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the Convention People's Party (CPP), the People's National Convention (PNC) and the Progressive People's Party (PPP)—to develop gender policy guidelines that would highlight considerations for women.
He noted that the measure was expected to increase the participation of women in public discussions and debates, thereby making them more visible in their respective communities.
Mr Braimah further explained that a database of women experts in various fields who could serve as interviewees, panellists or guests on media programmes would be compiled in collaboration with women's rights activists and organisations and made available to media houses.
"The move is to help deal with the perception of non-availability of women when it comes to public discourse and public spaces," the director observed.
He intimated that a media gender equality monitoring instrument had also been developed to monitor and report, on a monthly basis, the level of women's participation in programmes on the selected radio stations.
"We are in a country where people tend to associate competence with how often one is heard or appear in the media, which is rather unfortunate," he stated.
He added that "the project banks on the media's agenda setting capability as an effective tool for addressing stereotypes and gender imbalances."
The Executive Director of the Northern Sector Action on Awareness Centre (NORSAAC), Mr Alhassan Mohammed Awal, noted that women's participation in governance issues was a constitutional mandate and added that a lot more needed to be done by stakeholders to get more women involved in governance.
According to him, records show that since 1960 the representation of women in Parliament has not been encouraging.
He noted for instance that in 1960, out of the 104 seats in Parliament, only 10 of them were occupied by women.
Mr Awal further explained that in 1969 only one woman was in Parliament, out of the 140 seats in the House.
He observed that the situation was not different in 1992, 1996, 2008 and currently only 30 out of the 275 seats in Parliament were occupied by women.
He expressed regret that in the three northern regions women's assumption to the position of DCEs, regional ministers and regional coordinating directors, for instance, was still a challenge and until something extra was done to change the status quo, women would continue to have a low representation in decision-making positions, stressing that the media could set the agenda to increase women’s visibility in the media.
By Vincent Amenuveve/Daily Graphic/Ghana
