Political Parties Must Groom Women For Appointment

Political parties must constantly identify and groom more women to take up political appointment in their organisations as their commitment to the cause of women.

According to Mrs Hamida Harrison, Programme Manager of Abantu for Development, a gender-oriented non-governmental organisation (NGO), although some capable and qualified women had shown interest in politics, the unfriendly and male-dominated nature of the political terrain had made it difficult for most of the women to achieve their aims of holding political and other positions.

She said this during a two-day capacity building for regional and some constituency executives of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Accra.

She said the current low representation of women in positions in political parties, parliament, district assemblies and in government “make such institutions undemocratic.”

She said women constituted over 51 per cent of the entire population and therefore, if the institutions were democratic enough, at least the country would implement the Affirmative Action which demanded that at least 30 per cent of people at the helm of affairs were women.

Mrs Harrison noted that it was unacceptable for political parties that won and formed governments with less than 30 per cent women to claim that the issue had arisen due to lack of interest of women to take up political positions.

She said it was unfortunate that Ghana, which was the first country in Africa to implement Affirmative Action during the first Republic, seemed to be retrogressing.

She explained that if in 1960 there were 19 women in Parliament, it was unacceptable for the number to remain the same after 50 years.

Mrs Harrison said one of the cardinal tenets of democracy was level playing field and equal representation, therefore if the political parties believed in democracy, they should let the larger number of women reflect in all positions.

Narrowing down to the NDC, she wondered why the party was able to form a committee whose membership was made of only men to shortlist people for the position of District Chief Executives and expect that it would favour more women.

She explained that it was no wonder that only 12 women were made district chief executives out of the 170 positions available.

Guinea Bissau’s Cabinet Director, Dr Daniel Salla, who was the guest of honour, urged women to always include men in such programmes as part of the lobbying process and also afford them the opportunity to appreciate the challenges of women properly.

To the women, Mrs Harrison advised that to survive in the political scene, they must build their capacities, broaden their knowledge, acquire lobbying and negotiation skills and not to take men as their enemies but their collaborators.

She entreated the women to always remain steadfast, united and mobilise themselves to lobby for better economic and social policies, because they were the direct beneficiaries of such policies.

A Director at Abantu for Development, Mrs Elizabeth Akpalu, encouraged the women not to be deterred by opposition that might come their way in their bid to contest any political position.

The National Women Organiser of the NDC, Madam Anita De-Sooso, commended Abantu for organising the workshop for the NDC women and appealed to them to extend such capacity building programmes to more women in others parts of the country.