The Network for Women’s Rights (NETRIGHT) and the Affirmative Action Law Coalition (AALC) have issued a consolidated position paper pushing back against some of the government decisions on the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) report, insisting that key provisions on land rights, natural resources, and gender equality be strengthened before any constitutional amendments take effect.
The two groups’ response comes after the government accepted, rejected or modified various CRC recommendations across 14 priority areas, with the two arguing that many of the “not accepted” positions leave women and persons with disabilities exposed to continued discrimination.
At a meeting organised by NETRIGHT with the AALC, they called on the government to immediately extend proportional representation to all 276 existing parliamentary seats, rather than confining it to an additional 24 seats as currently proposed, while also entrenching a minimum 30 per cent quota for women in both Parliament and district assemblies.
In its position paper, while welcoming the government’s acceptance of proportional representation in principle, the AALC argued the proposal falls short of a genuine proportional system, since it would leave the bulk of Parliament under the existing constituency-based structure.
The government had proposed expanding Parliament to 300 members, made up of 276 directly elected constituency seats and 24 additional seats to be filled through proportional representation among women, persons with disabilities (PwDs) and the youth.
The coalition warned that the government’s 24-seat proposal would not guarantee meaningful gains for women, since the seats were shared among three categories.
It calculated that if divided equally, women would gain only eight seats, representing roughly 2.7 per cent of an expanded 300-member House — far short of the 90 seats needed to meet a 30 per cent threshold.
The coalition cited historical data showing women’s representation had never exceeded 20 per cent since independence, standing at just 9.6 per cent in 1960 and currently at about 14.86 per cent, with 41 women among the 276 MPs elected in 2024.
District Assembly level
At the local level, the AALC described the situation as more severe, noting that women’s representation in District Assemblies had stayed below 10 per cent in every election since 1994, falling to about 4.1 per cent in 2023, when only 269 of nearly 6,300 elected members were women despite 1,049 women contesting seats.
The coalition renewed its proposal for a new constitutional provision, Article 242(e), guaranteeing that at least 30 per cent of District Assembly Members be women, alongside a parallel amendment to Article 93 to secure the same threshold in Parliament.
It urged that the one-third appointed component of District Assemblies be used immediately to boost women’s numbers ahead of the 2027 District Assembly elections.
On government’s proposal to have District Chief Executives (DCEs) elected, with at least two of five presidential nominees required to be women, the AALC cautioned that nomination and shortlisting did not amount to actual representation, and called for mechanisms to monitor real outcomes for women in DCE elections.
The coalition concluded that Ghana’s constitutional review offered a rare chance to move women’s political equality from an aspiration to an enforceable guarantee, insisting that proportional representation, constitutional quotas and the Affirmative Action (Gender Equity) Act, 2024, must work together rather than in isolation to close a representation gap that has persisted since independence.
NETRIGHT in its position paper also proposed reforms to Article 22 to ensure equitable distribution of marital property, arguing that courts’ longstanding “substantial contribution” test has disadvantaged women whose contributions often take the form of unpaid domestic labour.
NETRIGHT’s submission concludes with a broader structural demand: that disability inclusion and gender-responsive governance be treated as cross-cutting constitutional principles binding on all branches and levels of government, rather than confined to a single chapter of the CRC report.
It said this would ensure gender and disability considerations were embedded in budgeting, planning and resource governance decisions nationwide, rather than left to piecemeal legislation.
Writer’s email:
