Worry women will prefer church service, chores to voting

Accra, Nov. 3, GNA - The December 7 general election, which falls on Sunday, has assumed a gender dimension, as some women groups on Monday expressed concern that the day could result in low turnout for their female counterparts, especially Christians. Ms Bernice Sam, National Coordinator of the Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF), Ghana, explained that besides Sunday being a day of worship, most women had hectic domestic responsibilities on weekends and as such combining the three duties would make them reluctant to vote.

"Most of the women would want to concentrate on providing for their family needs first after the services before thinking of voting," she said.

Ms. Sam said this at a press conference in Accra to announce an event for Thursday that would provide a platform for women to dialogue with presidential candidates to articulate their concerns. She said the findings of a gender analysis on the Election Day it conducted to substantiate the fact would be made public on Wednesday and advised women to fully participate in the election process.

The programme, dubbed; "Women's Dialogue with Presidential Candidates" is a collaborative effort of WilDAF Ghana, Federation of International Women Lawyers (FIDA Ghana), Coalition of Women in Governance, Gender Centre and the Hunger Project Ghana. The dialogue which would take place at the National Theatre in Accra from 1500 to 1800 hours would host presidential candidates of the New Patriotic Party, National Democratic Congress, Convention People's Party, People's National Convention (PNC) and the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP).

Ms Sam said the dialogue that was expected to attract over 700 women nationwide would have the theme; "Vision of Political Parties for Women in the 2008 Elections and Beyond" to add to bench marks being used by Ghanaian women to assess which party to vote for. She said each political party would be allocated 10 minutes to touch on policies and programmes they had outlined to promote the interests of women.

The National Coordinator therefore called on the general public, especially women, to attend the programme to help gain commitment of political parties in addressing women's concerns. Ms Margaret Brew-Ward, a representative of Gender Centre, explained that the dialogue was part of a project dubbed; "We Know Politics" funded by the Royal Netherlands Embassy and the United Kingdom Department for International Development.

She said the project was aimed at increasing the number of women in governance and highlighting gender equality and women empowerment. Ms Ward-Brew said so far, the project had consulted about 800 women and gender advocates to develop key strategies to include women's concerns in elections and trained 287 volunteers to embark on voter education and the need to involve women in governance. Ms Ward-Brew noted that the project would also include other programmes such as lobbying, public information and awareness activities.