Review policy to reflect changing gender roles
The Director of Science and Technology Policy Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-STEPRI), Dr Mrs Wilhemina Quaye, has stated the need to revise policy to reflect the reality of the trends in migration from a Social Transformation (ST) perspective.
She said such a review was also needed to reflect on ST in gender roles and power relations.
Social transformation refers to the process of change in institutionalised relationships, norms, values and hierarchies over time.
Dr Quaye said these when she presented a paper on the “Policy Insights on Climate Resilience, Migration and Gender from Social Transformation Perspective” during a virtual symposium hosted by the CSIR-STEPRI in Accra.
The symposium was organised under the Resilience Against Climate Change Social Transformation Research and Policy Advocacy (REACH-STR) project, which is a six-year (2019-2025) research collaboration among the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), University of Ghana - Centre for Migration Studies (CMS), the University of Development Studies (UDS) and the CSIR-STEPRI.
Gaps in policies
Dr Quaye identified some gaps in various migration policies, namely the National Migration Policy (2016), the National Population Policy (2017), National Gender Policy (2015) and the Ghana National Social Protection Policy (2015).
The gaps included the inadequate emphasis on ST and emerging issues, the absence of the functional levels of coordination that should exist among the stakeholder, governmental and private sector institutions, and the lack of information on the extent of implementation and analysis of impact of gender-related policies at local, regional and national levels.
Barriers to themes
Dr Quaye cited dysfunctional strategies, weak institutional capacity, resource and funding constraints and inequality in policy planning and implementation as some key barriers to the policy making process that overlapped between all themes under the REACH-STR - climate change, migration and gender policies.
She noted that little attention had been devoted to contextual inputs for enhanced policy making and implementation.
“Climate change issues should not just be mainstreamed and treated as cross-cutting in developmental planning. Building local adaptive capacity requires proactive use of indigenous knowledge.
“Integration of the social dimensions of climate change into national and development policies has become critical,” she added.
Project overview
The Researcher-Project Coordinator, REACH-STR, Dr Mrs Charity Osei-Amponsah, explained that the project was being funded by the European Union (EU) under its Productive Investment for Agriculture and Savannah Ecological Zones.
She noted that challenges such as the high climate variability, pressure on natural resource base, low soil fertility, prolonged drought and rapid socio-economic changes had necessitated the REACH-STR project to produce a social transformation analysis that would help decision makers understand and address the challenges.
“The objective of the STR is to generate knowledge on ST conditions that promote sustainable and inclusive rural development, adoption of climate change adaptation and mitigation practices.
“It will also contribute to a better understanding of district, regional and national decision makers on ST conditions and provide support application of ST analysis in development planning,” she stated.
She said the three main work streams of the project were youth and migration, gender and climate resilience.
The symposium
The virtual policy symposium was targeted at actors at the local level whose research activities are connected to dealing with social transformation in the Upper West Region.
Already, theoretical reviews into migration, climate change and gender relations had been discussed, and that provided entry points for further discussions into the challenges of implementing the migration, climate change and gender policies in relation to social transformation in the Upper West Region in particular and northern Ghana in general.
The general objective of the workshop was to dialogue with key stakeholders on research outcomes from the formulation and implementation of policies related to migration, climate change and gender to deal with the challenges emerging from social transformation caused by migration, climate change and changing gender roles.
Climate change is considered to have aggravating effects on the quality of livelihoods of people in northern Ghana.
Particularly, rural inhabitants of communities in the region are subject to increasing food insecurity as a result of climate change. The increasing food insecurity caused by climate change has caused excessive migration, which has also led to changing gender roles among rural populations, creating complex developmental challenges for planners in the region.
Thus, there is a need for better analysis and understanding of the transformation processes resulting from such occurrences in the region.