Empower women to challenge gender-based discrimination — Population officer
The Eastern Regional Population Officer of the National Population Council (NPC), Mr Isaac Ter-ibinibe Sopelle, has called for the empowerment of women to challenge rooted gender-based discrimination to be able to increase their access to educational and employment opportunities.
Mr Sopelle listed some of the areas as politics, health, business, education, the right to own property and access to credit.
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He also identified some cultural practices such as female genital mutilation, early marriage, inadequate access to agricultural land and discrimination at work places as some of the challenges facing women.
Mr Sopelle made the call last Friday at a media engagement to mark this year’s world population day at Koforidua, the Eastern Regional capital.
The event, with the theme, "Prioritising reproductive health is an answer to rights and choices," which falls every July 11, was attended by journalists in Koforidua, officials from the Ghana Health Service (GHS), the Department of Gender, the Ghanan statistical service and the National Population Council (NPC).
Affordable health care
According to him, the world health organisation had clearly stated that unless women and girls had access to quality and affordable health care, freely exercised their sexual and reproductive health rights and treated and respected as equals, Ghana would not achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 agenda.
Mr Sopelle further stated that achieving gender equality and realising the human rights of women was a key requirement for a just and sustainable country, and that when women were valued, enabled and empowered that would result in sustainable development.
He also explained that women had the right to be informed and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice as well as other methods.
Challenges
Mr Sopelle, however, expressed regret that access to such information and services was mostly unavailable for people, especially adolescents and the youth.
He added that where the services were even available, they were faced with numerous challenges such as distance to services and the unfriendly attitude of service providers.
He said the NPC as the highest advisory body to the government on population and its related issues had been calling on partners to integrate population variables into development plans.
Family planning
The Head of Reproductive Health Unit of the GHS, Madam Ellen Darkoa Asare, who took the participants through Prioritising Reproductive Health Services for Women and Girls, said family planning was very important to couples to space out their children, stressing that couples should visit health facilities for family planning services.
The objective of the family planning, she explained, was to provide adequate information, education and counselling to individuals and couples to enable them to decide freely and responsibly when to start childbearing, the number and spacing of children.
Understand women rights better
The acting Eastern Regional Director of the Department of Gender, Mrs Juliana Abbeyquaye, who also briefed the participants on the topic; “rights and choices - an answer to women and girls empowerment,” stated that it was her outfit’s dream and aspiration to get them educated to fully understand their own rights better.
"It is our aim, dream and aspiration that as a region, we can get to a point where promotion of women and girls rights becomes an everyday thing, and that women and girls can freely make better choices in life", Mrs Abbeyquaye stated.