Ghana Armed Forces build capacity of gender advisors
The Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) has organised its maiden Gender Advisors Cadre workshop to equip gender advisors to mainstream gender inclusivity in the army.
About 30 gender advisers attended the two-day intensive training in Accra last Wednesday.
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The participants were taken through topics such as “Who a Gender Advisor is in the Ghana Armed Force” and “Gender mainstreaming in GAF” including their roles and responsibilities as gender advisors.
It was on a theme: “Guaranteeing equal opportunities in the Ghana Armed Forces.”
Cadre workshop
At the opening ceremony, the Gender Policy Advisor to the Chief of the Defence Staff, Naval Captain Veronica Adwo Arhin, explained that the GAF had conducted several activities including a high-level gender conference to improve the execution of the newly created gender advisor’s role.
She noted that a committee was currently working on developing a Gender Policy for the GAF.
Mainstream Gender
Delivering the keynote address, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Vice Admiral Seth Amoama, said gender mainstreaming was the mindset and mental perception about the other sex, where opportunities and responsibilities were fairly distributed based on capability rather than sex.
“There is the temptation to overly concentrate on increasing female numbers in our rank and hierarchy. That is good to do and we are all aware of what the Armed Forces is doing in that regard,” he said.
He added that irrespective of one’s sex, each person had the potential, which needed to be properly harnessed and integrated for a balanced development in any society.
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Strength of GAF
Admiral Amoama expressed the hope that decision makers at all levels would see the strength of the Armed Forces in terms of the capabilities of a person and not based on gender.
“Anything short of this does not only breed inequality but also places huge burden on one sex and that is the male.”
“We must work to eliminate the engrained notion of ‘because she is a woman’, or ‘because he is a man’, and rather get to the point of ‘because we are soldiers’”, he added.
Touching on the workshop, he urged the participants to take advantage of the training, and advised them to constantly educate GAF personnel on the importance of gender mainstreaming and respect for each sex.
Admiral Amoama also commended the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) for their continuous support to the army’s gender initiative.