Allow girls to be assertive — stakeholders
Parents have been advised not to cow their female children into timidity. This is to ensure that young girls will be assertive in their choices in life as they grow into adulthood.
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The call was made in Accra at a stakeholder’s forum on achieving gender parity goals across the country.
Attended by queenmothers, health personnel, civil society, development partners, celebrities and the media, the forum was on the theme ‘Beyond International Women’s Day (IWD), practical steps for achieving the United Nations 2016 theme for IWD, ‘Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step it up for gender equality’.
Organised by Hope for Future Generations (HFFG), a non-governmental organisation, it was aimed at deliberating on practical steps that would help the country to achieve gender equality.
As part of the programme, stakeholders pledged to commit to ‘help women and girls achieve their ambitions; challenge concious and unconscious bias; call for gender balanced leadership, value women and men’s contributions equally and finally create inclusive, flexible cultures’.
Better leaders
The Queen Mother of Koteiman and former Vice President, Greater Accra Queenmothers Association, Naa Koteitsoo Afrasomanso I, in a presentation on ‘Creating inclusive, flexible cultures’, said over the years, customs and tradition had created barriers for women.
She said through customs and tradition, women had been relegated to the background where they were unable to assert themselves.
Today, however, she said the situation had changed and, so parents and society should ensure that the girl-child was given the opportunity to excel just like their male counterparts.
Women and girls, she said, should be sensitised to their rights to enable them to access them.
The Greater Accra Regional Director of Health, Dr Linda Vanotoo, who spoke on the topic ‘Calling for gender-balanced leadership’ said there was the need to look at the country’s gender policy and implement them to ensure that there was gender parity in all leadership positions.
She said it was unfortunate that women continued to be under-represented on boards and in politics.
She added that although women possessed better qualities as leaders, men continued to dominate in all spheres.
Women, she said, had the capacity and ability to lead when given the needed push.
Biases
Speaking on the topic ‘Challenge concious and unconscious bias’, Mrs Odilia Ofori Ntiamoah, founder of Odilia Ntiamoah Foundation, said because people had lived with their perceptions of women over a period of time, some of the biases meted out sometimes conciously or unconsciously.
“The situation can only be changed when parents start conscientising their children to believe in both sexes from the home,” she said.
She called for more women to be encouraged to go into politics in order to help enact laws which would be gender-sensitive.
A celebrity, Ms Akofa Edjeni, called for influential women in society to mentor young girls so that they could make informed choices.
The Programmes Manager of HFFG, Mr Emmanuel Nuworzah, called on all to see each other as partners in development.