CEGENSA honours mentors of women academics

The Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CEGENSA) of the University of Ghana (UG) has honoured some distinguished personalities who are mentoring female academics of the university to step out and take challenging roles in the academic field.

The 28 awardees, who received citations and gifts comprised 10 males and 18 females who were nominated by their female proteges for the honour. They include the Vice-Chancellor of the UG, Professor Nana Aba Appiah Amfo; the Director of the Pan African Doctoral Academy, Prof. Jemima Anderson; two former Vice-Chancellors of the university, Prof. Ivan Addae-Mensah and Prof. Ernest Aryeteey; the Provost of the College of Humanities of the university, Prof. Daniel Ofori Frimpong and the Dean of the School of Public Health, UG, Prof. Kwasi Torpey.

The event, chaired by the Deputy Global Chairperson of WiLAT Global, Dr Doreen Owusu-Fianko, brought together lecturers from CEGENSA and affiliates. It was on the theme: “Empowering women academics and accelerating their progress in a changing world”.

Importance 

The Director of CEGENSA, Dr Deborah Atobrah, said the promotion of mentoring within UG since the inception of the centre in 2005 had been a strategic pursuit for fostering gender equality within the UG community.

For that reason, a mentoring committee was formed in the early years of the centre which was once chaired by the current Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Amfo.

She said although several mentoring initiatives had been carried out over the years, many early and mid-career female faculty in the university were not adequately and effectively mentored.

To make mentoring more effective for both mentors and protegees, the centre in 2022 decided to generate some scientific evidence on what a viable mentoring model for female academics in the country would look like.

"Preliminary findings from this CEGENSA-led study show a huge mentoring deficit for female academics and high work-related despondencies among the group. We also noted the enormous demands that mentoring places on mentors," Dr Atobrah said.  

As such, with support from the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) to celebrate the 2024 International Women’s Day, the centre proposed to celebrate the promoters of women.

Dr Atobrah said the centre received 32 outstanding submissions which were nominated by female faculty as their key mentors that needed to be appreciated.

Women leadership

The Pro Vice-Chancellor, Students and Academic Affairs of the UG, Prof. Gordon Awandare, stated that the university had improved on its women leadership, disclosing that among the deans and directors, the ratio of women had been increasing steadily.

Prof. Awandare indicated that there had been progress made in that regard and it was a testament to the mentorship that the women taking leadership positions had received from other women and also men.

Despite the progress, however, Prof. Awandare said there was still a lot of work to be done and urged more women and girls to venture into male-dominated areas, as a lot of the women remained in the humanities, leaving a huge deficit of women scientists.

"That is something we need to continue to pay attention to", he stated, stating that "I have done my part in a small way to bring more women into science and to encourage women to come into science".

AWDF

A representative of AWDF, Beatrice Boakye Yiadom, said the fund was established to invest in women and advance their cause. "That is why AWDF awarded grants to 10 women-led organisations and entities in Ghana, including CEGENSA to commemorate International Women's Day and keep investing in women and girls in Ghana and beyond," she said.

Mr Boakye Yiadom said last year, AWDF launched its 10-year strategic framework which would focus on resourcing, nurturing and strengthening African women's rights and feminist groups, organisations and movements that were best placed to help achieve transformative change that ensured women and girls in all their diversities enjoyed equal rights and opportunities.