Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians attend conference

Accra, Nov. 28, GNA -Mrs Juliana Azumah-Mensah, Minister of Women and Children Affairs, on Monday urged political parties to make their manifestos women-friendly to encourage more women to participate in politics, particularly as parliamentarians.

She said the gap between men and women in political or decision making levels was still huge, therefore efforts must be made to close it to ensure equity.

Speaking at the 2nd Conference of Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians, West Africa Region, in Accra, Mrs Azumah-Mensah said women politicians could not succeed without political parties assisting them and called on the parties to give women 50 per cent discount in their bid to contest a political seat.

The conference being hosted by Women Parliamentarians in Ghana is being attended by members of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) in West Africa to deliberate on issues affecting women particularly, their role in decision making.

In addition, it would witness the inauguration of Ghana's Chapter of the CWP, West African Sub-region expected to play pivotal role in championing the participation of women in politics.

The CWP (Africa region) was established by women delegates at the 1989 conference of the CPA to promote an increase in the participation of women in politics and work towards gender mainstreaming in all programmes or activities of member countries.

This conference thus underscored the significant roles political parties can play in complementing efforts of the Association.

Members from Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Cameroon and The Gambia are participating in the conference.

Mrs Azumah-Mensah said her Ministry had already started championing the need to increase women's participation by collaborating with other stakeholders to promote the Affirmative Action programme to ensure that more women climbed up the political ladder and other higher positions in public life.

Mrs Elizabeth Akpalu, Chief Executive Officer, AGE Ghana, an NGO, said increasing women's political representation would require a constitutional guarantee, a voluntary political party quota system and innovative electoral structures such as the proportional representation system.

She said the media could also be involved to scrutinise manifestos of political parties and getting commitment from them with regard to increasing women in all structures of decision making in the party and in government.

Mr Jake Otanka Obestebi-Lamptey, National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and some party executives, Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketsia, General Secretary of National Democratic Congress (NDC) and Ms Samia Yaba Nkrumah, CPP National Chairperson were present to show their solidarity.

GNA