Ministry holds community durbar to discuss gender equality
A representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Ms Dennia Gyale, has identified gender-based discrimination as one major challenge to the attainment of gender equality.
Advertisement
She said, for instance, most young girls who dropped out of school after primary education were left with no qualification or skills to make them employable on the job market or set up their own businesses.
Community durbar
Speaking at a community durbar organised by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection at Abokobi near Accra as part of activities marking this year’s International Women’s Day which falls on March 8, Ms Gyale mentioned that the peculiar health needs of women which were sometimes ignored formed part of the challenges to gender equality.
Held on the theme: “Equality for women is progress for all through total inclusion,” the durbar was aimed at drawing attention towards promoting access to education as a right and supporting efforts at increasing enrolment and retention of the vulnerable in school.
For instance, Ms Gyale said transportation difficulties, access to health facilities, women’s inability to take critical decisions on issues related to their health, among other issues had led to high mortality and morbidity rates in the country.
She said these challenges and obstacles had hindered various interventions aimed at achieving gender equality, social protection and women empowerment in contravention with the Millennium Development Goal 3 (MDG3), which was related to promoting gender equality.
Urgent solutions
In her speech, the Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, said there was the need for urgent solutions to address the challenges hindering gender equality.
She said Ghana had made strides towards achieving MDG 2 and 3 which respectively were related to ensuring universal basic education and eliminating gender inequality, especially, gender disparity in schools for both boys and girls.
However, she said there were some challenges which included enrolment and retention of boys and girls at the various levels of education, with orphans girls being the most affected.
Nana Lithur, therefore, called for the adoption of practical steps such as reducing violence against girls, strengthening opportunities and increasing access to education to reverse the trend.
On breaking the poverty cycle, she said educated women had more economic opportunities and a greater chance for socio-economic advancement.
Efforts by govt
She said the government would intensify programmes and policies to support basic education, and reiterated the ministry’s commitment to adopt policies and programmes to overcome gender inequality.
“A lot of institutional, administrative and legal reforms have been initiated, including the promotion of gender mainstreaming in all governing processes, gender responsive budgeting, policies and the enactment of laws criminalising harmful cultural practices”, she stated.