Affirmative action is a policy or program providing advantages for people of a minority group where are seen to have traditionally been discriminated against with the aim of creating a more egalitarian society through preferential access to education, healthcare, employment and social welfare.
There has been numerous calls on past and present government by Civil organizations such as Centre for Democratic Development, CDD Ghana , the Affirmative Action Coalition and Individuals to pass the Affirmative Action bill that was drafted over 10 years. This Bill will include the marginalized group such as women in developmental agenda.
The Bill is important as it cut across the importance of representation of women in development and politics. Women in Ghana are faced with lots of challenges and having a great number of people in government and areas of development will help in addressing these challenges. Many women in Ghana are faced with discriminatory and sensitive issues that hinders their development. They are also faced with limited autonomy, low status poverty, gender based violence, lack of access of justice and legal information and lack of access to land and credit facilities.
The Affirmative action bill when passed will enable women to have full representation and access to some of the most important things and aspect of development such as education, health care, legal service and credit facilities that are accessed by mostly the elite and affluence and for the country to move from more rhetoric to action, the onus lies on political leadership to take bold steps to address the implementation of gender based policies.
Thank you for sharing! I am glad to see that Ghana is making strides to increase women’s participation in politics. However, I am curious to see how the implementation of this turns out. In a lot of cases like this around the world, the passing of the bill is one hurdle to overcome but the implementation is another especially if the implementation lies solely in the hands of the government. This reminds me of our week 4 readings which discuss the role of the government in gender and development. The authors explain that in GAD policies, governments have to play a vital role in making and implementing policies/ programs (or in this case a legislation), that focus on making women’s interests and experiences a vital factor/contributor to the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of policies, programs and legislations. Consequently, the government of Ghana needs to consider the political, social and economic aspects of this bill so that women at all levels can benefit from it .They should come up with various monitoring and evaluative strategies to ensure that women are actually appointed in political positions. Furthermore, they will have to ensure that those appointed are not merely tokens placed there to fulfill a national quota but actual contributors whose voices are not suppressed by the male majority. This leads me to wonder about the chances of this happening because the majority of the political seats are still occupied by men. Nevertheless, the government’s effective implementation will be the first step in ensuring that women’s voices are heard in the political sphere which will hopefully lead to the generation of solutions to the problems that women face in Ghana.
ReplyDeleteIt is heart warming to see that Ghana is making efforts to increase the participation of women in politics. I am curious to see how the implementation process goes. I think that most times such bills are passed by government to quiet the people and also to make it look like they are doing something about the situation when in actual fact they are not.
ReplyDeleteWe must move forward from just passing such bills but also putting into action what is on paper. I must commend the current government for including more women in his cabinet thereby encouraging women inclusivity.
As women, we must also acquire the knowledge and skills that are requisite for positions such as those in politics so as to be considered for such positions and to also have a valid voice of change.
This is great news! This post made me think about one of our first readings in class, Joan Acker’s piece “From sex roles to Gendered Institutions” where it stated that looking at social institutions as gendered can provide critical perspective into analyzing not only the exclusion of women from these spaces but also the overall institutional structure and areas that have been formed and to some extent benefitted through a gendered process. In this case, Ghana’s Affirmative Action Bill will allow women to acquire representation within the political sphere as well as social benefits. When reading that this bill had been drafted previously and it has taken so long for it to be now so close to being passed it made sense to think back on Acker’s piece. It is obvious that there is a latent need for change in these gendered institutions in Ghana, social movements and certain parties have made this claim to authorities and public society. However, I could suspect that the will of not only people in power but those who benefit from a gendered political system will not always be present. In these circumstances, in such preliminary stages, social movements and critical examinations of current institutional status is necessary for the accountability if there is to be honest shift of traditionally gendered systems so that they do not merely just include women but also allow their voices, points of view and participation to be counted as equal.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this, Doris! I strongly perceive that a policy like this will be a monumental starting point for women’s agency, inclusion, and visibility. Even now, there has been a significant increment in women in politics than decades ago which shows a gradual transition from ‘no woman’ to ‘more women’ involved in all political and developmental processes (thanks to the 31st December Women’s Movement which was led by Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings with the aim of including women in all political and developmental processes). However, my worry stems from how over the years, when policies are introduced and there is a change in government, the policies from the previous government are overlooked and neglected or the pace for implementing become slow. Other times, new ones are introduced and old policies of the supposed government which could not be fully implemented are continued. I hope this program will not be politicized rather, seen as a need to drive development. I am, nonetheless, staying optimistic that women currently present in the political sphere (and men, equally) would advocate and fight for the successful implementation of policies as such and the media would play its part by ensuring that the public will be abreast on the importance of the policy to speed up its passage and implementation.
ReplyDeleteThe passing of affirmative action has sparked national interest in recent times. As a country, we must recognize that women's equal participation is crucial for fostering democracy and advancing socioeconomic development. The formulation and execution of national policies to accomplish the goal of equal representation and participation of women in decision-making have been delayed for reasons best known to our lawmakers( Parliamentarians ). I firmly believe that growth, democracy, and peace depend on women having the same rights as men and having an equal say in issues of great interest to the nation.
ReplyDelete