New gender policy launched
A new national gender policy to replace the existing one which was crafted in 2004 has been launched in Accra.
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The new policy, an initiative of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, deals comprehensively with gender equality, equity and the empowerment of women and girls for development.
The new policy has become necessary because the old one has been found to be inadequate for addressing gender-related concerns in the country.
The Chief Justice, Mrs Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, who launched the policy in Accra yesterday, said gender incorporation should deliberately give visibility and support to women’s contributions.
“We should not assume that women will benefit equally from gender-neutral development interventions. I dare say that policies and programmes that ignore differential impact on gender groups are often gender blind and potentially harmful for human development”, she said.
She commended the Gender Ministry for coming out with the policy and said it would help create the platform for many women, including the vulnerable, to, among other things, have access to Justice.
She said the policy would also create the platform for economic opportunities for all Ghanaian women through the engendering of macro-economic and trade policies so that their basic and strategic needs are addressed.
Justice Wood said gender incorporation made good policy sense, adding that the Judiciary had a duty to lend its fullest support to the national effort.
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“To this end and in support, we in the Judiciary and the Judicial Service are committed to ensuring gender sensitivity in all our operations, policies and programmes in order to promote gender equity in the appointment of judges and staff, education and the capacity building of both the Judiciary and staff of the Judicial Service,” she added.
Gender policy
The six-chapter policy document aims at incorporating gender equality concerns into the national development processes by improving the legal, civic, political, economic and socio-cultural conditions of the people, particularly, women, children, the vulnerable and others with special needs.
The policy provides broad guidelines, strategies and institutional framework to operationalise the government’s commitments to achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment targets in its national vision of a stable, united, inclusive and prosperous country with opportunities for all.
The gender agenda
The Minister of Gender, Children and Social protection, Nana Oye Lithur, in her welcome address, said although the country had laws such as the Intestate Succession Law, laws to criminalise harmful cultural and traditional practices such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), harmful widowhood rites and ritual servitude, among others, bottlenecks to gender incorporation persisted.
Nana Oye said the gender incorporation agenda of the ministry was meant to bring women’s perspectives to the centre of attention by ensuring that all policies, programmes and activities took the contributions, priorities and needs of both women and men into consideration.
Messages
The UNFPA Country Representative, Dr Babatunde Ahonsi, in a solidarity message, called on the ministry to endeavour to draft a bill to be passed into law that would help to enforce the provisions in the policy.
He commended the ministry and said the UNFPA would continue to offer its support to the country in critical policy areas as part of the national development agenda.
A young female activist with the Ghana Federation of the Disabled, Ms Mawunyo Yakor-Dagbah, in a message, called on men to believe in the empowerment of women in the 21st century.
Image caption
- Mrs Justice Georgina Theodora Wood (with scissors) launching the National Gender Policy in Accra yesterday. Those with her are Nana Oye Lithur (3rd right), and Dr Babatunde Ahonsi (right), UNFPA Country Representative.
Picture: EDNA ADUSERWAA