Ghana's constitutional reform process has moved from consultation to implementation.
Among the proposals attracting the most attention is the government's plan to cap Parliament at 300 members.
The existing 276 constituency seats would remain, with 24 additional seats allocated through proportional representation for women, persons with disabilities and young people.
This is potentially an important step. But the real question is no longer whether proportional representation should be introduced but how it will be designed.
Ghana runs a first-past-the-post electoral system, and that fact matters more than it might first appear.
In a first-past-the-post system, each constituency produces a single winner, and party gatekeeping, incumbency and the cost of competition tend to reproduce whoever already holds power.
Affirmative action measures such as party quotas, financial concessions, and encouragement to run can shift outcomes only gradually within that architecture, because they still depend on parties choosing to nominate and support women in winnable seats.
Ghana's experience under the Affirmative Action (Gender Equity) Act, 2024 (Act 1121) illustrates the importance of moving from commitments on paper to mechanisms that produce measurable representation.
Government’s proposal
This is precisely why the government's proposal deserves credit.
Under a first-past-the-post system, reserved seats allocated outside constituency competition are one of the few mechanisms that can guarantee rather than merely encourage representation.
Affirmative action reshapes incentives, whereas reserved seats directly guarantee outcomes.
Countries that use proportional list systems can build gender balance into the list itself.
Ghana, working within a predominantly constituency-based system, does not have that option available to it in the same way, which is exactly why a dedicated PR component for the 24 seats matters.
Ghana needs both affirmative action and reserved seats, but they are not substitutes for one another, and the White Paper is right to treat the 24 seats as a distinct lever rather than folding the problem back into affirmative action alone.
Ensuring equitable allocation
That said, a mechanism designed to guarantee representation only works if its internal rules do so as well.
If women, persons with disabilities and young people are simply placed within one pool of 24 seats without clear allocation rules, women's representation could remain uncertain.
Groups that have historically been excluded from political power should not be placed in competition with one another, with the representation of any one group left dependent on political bargaining among the rest.
The implementation framework must, therefore, contain clear, enforceable gender guarantees not as a special favour, but because women make up roughly half (50.7 per cent) of Ghana's population, and their representation in Parliament is a matter of democratic legitimacy, not interest-group accommodation.
The design should also reinforce Act 1121 rather than operate alongside it as a separate initiative.
If party lists are ultimately part of the model, the rules governing those lists will be decisive.
Gender-balanced or alternating lists can prevent women from being placed in positions where they are unlikely to obtain seats; transparent nomination and allocation procedures will be equally important.
The process must also account for the fact that women are not a homogeneous group.
Young women, women with disabilities and women from marginalised communities can face overlapping barriers that a single, undifferentiated quota may not address.
The independent study the government has proposed should not be treated as a technical exercise conducted behind closed doors.
It should examine the likely gender impact of different models, the relationship to Act 1121, and the implications for regional representation and electoral integrity with meaningful input from women's rights organisations, women political leaders and aspirants, persons with disabilities, political parties, electoral experts and civil society.
Representation must also be meaningful, not merely numerical. Members entering Parliament through proportional representation must carry the same constitutional status, legislative opportunities and institutional support as constituency MPs.
The goal is not a second tier of legislators, but a Parliament that better reflects the country it serves.
Public education will also matter; therefore, constitutional reform cannot succeed if citizens do not understand what is being proposed.
Before any referendum, Ghanaians should have clear, evidence-based information about how the 24 seats will work, who can participate, and what the reform means for democratic representation.
GenCED supports the direction but calls for enforceable gender guarantees, transparent allocation rules and meaningful public participation in the design process.
The writer is Executive Director,
Gender Centre for Empowering Development (GenCED).
