2023 IWD: Making women, children a priority should not be a lip service – PNC to government

The People’s National Convention (PNC) has called for more efforts to be put into making decisions that are beneficial to both women and children in the country.

According to the PNC, making women and children a “priority” should not only be “lip service.”

Commemorating International Women’s Day (IWD), today, Wednesday, 8 March 2023, the PNC in a statement signed by its General Secretary Janet Nabla reminded the government to use its Constitutional mandate to ensure that employers provide a place for mothers who are still breastfeeding to keep their children in while at work.

The PNC intimated that “the Ghanaian woman who doubles as a working mother and a housewife has suffered a lot of challenges in recent times.

“It’s been a struggle for working mothers to find an easy and convenient place to drop their babies who are breastfeeding and are not up to school-going age. This has not only affected women but productivity at their workplaces. This has a direct toll on the GDP and development of the country."

Referring to the 1992 constitution, Article 27- Women’s Rights, the PNC noted that: “In Article 27(2) it is stated that “Facilities shall be provided for the care of children below school-going age to enable women, who have the traditional care for children, realise their full Potential”, it, therefore, reminded the government to “implement the constitutional mandate by ensuring that employers provide centres for children who are still breastfeeding to enable women to realise their full potential at the workplace.”

It further noted that: “The issue of increasing maternity leave will further aggravate unemployment among women since the government who has a constitutional mandate to give equal opportunity in recruitment is not recruiting women (labour commission 87 percent of men are recruited into the public sector and 13 percent of women) and the private sector is also not interested in women whom they assumed are liabilities due to the three months maternity leave.”

The PNC also called for the implementation of “good policies that are already in our constitution before thinking of adding more through the constitutional review committee.”

Stressing on the theme for this year’s IWD celebration, ‘Innovation and Technological Change, and Education in the Digital Age for Achieving Gender Equality and the Empowerment of all Women and Girls’, the PNC stressed that the theme “cannot be achieved if the girl child upon all her achievement will not be able to concentrate at the workplace due to childbearing to make an impact to her country.”

It added: “Government should provide scholarships to the girl child who desires to study computer science or information technology as the future is predicted to be a digital industrial revolution with an estimated six trillion dollars potential.”