Government urged to make policies women development oriented

Wa, March 14, GNA-The National Union of Ghana Students Women's Commissioner, Madam Fummey Magdalene Sefakor has called on the government to make its policies and programmes women development oriented to push the country's development agenda forward.

She explained that for government to achieve the desire results in education, politics, health, economics and social development, its policies and programmes must convince women that their welfare and progress was guaranteed and protected.

"What matters is that Ghanaian women have succeeded in shedding off those inhibitions that make them have very little confidence in their own capabilities.

"Now they know what they are capable of and in that knowledge lays the essence of their liberation and it is now left to the government to make things work for their total well-being by initiating positive policies and programmes", she pointed out. Madam Sefakor made the call in a statement to commemorate the International Women's Day celebration in Wa on Thursday. "Women personified the whole society and therefore any policy or programmes that relegate them to the background would not be in the best of interest of society", she pointed out. Madam Sefakor urged policymakers to use the occasion to remind themselves of the fact that Ghanaian women had come a long way in their quest for inclusion into the global development agenda. She noted that, there had been several barriers and disparities between women's legal rights and their economic status as against their male counterparts.

She mentioned widowhood rites, female genital mutilation and Trokosi as some of the practices that had been impacting negatively on the total well-being of women, which needed to be addressed. Besides, women had not been adequately empowered economically because government's micro credit policies had been shrouded with bureaucratic tendencies at the regional and district levels, a practice that had been an obstacle for rural women to access the credit. Madam Sefakor said women had remained disadvantaged in education, ownership of land and entitlement to kingship due to traditional beliefs and cultural practices, while government's appointment of women to ministerial positions had been on the low side even though they formed about 51 per cent of the country's population.