Government urged to promote women’s social & economic welfare
The government has been called upon to implement policies and programmes that will promote the economic security and integrity of young women in the country.
The call has become necessary as there are still issues of sexual and economic exploitation of women, unpaid care work, sexual harassment among others facing young women across the country.
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This was contained in a communique issued by the young urban women's movement after its annual conference in Accra last Thursday.
"We want the government to ensure the implementation of policies that respond positively to our concerns regarding sexual and reproductive health rights, unpaid care work and sexual harassment at the workplace", the group said.
Objective
The Young Urban Women's Movement is made up of about 5,000 young women between the ages of 15 and 35 in the Upper East, Northern, Bono, Bono East, Ahafo and Greater Accra regions.
The group seeks to promote the welfare of young women in urban areas across the country and the three-day conference was to enable the young women develop a national advocacy plan for the organisation.
Exploitation of workers
Presenting the communiqué, the Chairperson of the movement, Ms Hafsa Yurizaa Zakaria said a research by the group in 2018 painted a dark and gloomy picture of how young women were struggling to survive in urban areas.
She said what made matters worse was when cases of sexual harassment and abuse were reported but ignored by security officers.
"We observed that employers exploited their workers economically, especially those in the informal sector because of the perception that the employer is doing the employee a favour by employing him or her", she said.
She, therefore, urged the government to expedite work on the passage of the laws that protected the rights of domestic workers and also implement policies to address gender based harassment in the work place.
Ms Zakaria also urged the government to adequately resource the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) to enable them to handle some of the cases, especially at the district level.
Unpaid care work
Touching on unpaid care work, Ms Zakaria said majority of women and girls spent long hours to cook, clean and care for children, the sick and the aged, yet those were not captured in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or national data on productivity in the country.
Childcare centres needed
She urged the government to recognise care work mostly performed by women at home as part of the national productivity statistics.
She also asked the government to waive off taxes on menstruation kits to make them accessible to the poor and vulnerable women and girls across the country.