Encourage listing of female-owned firms - BoG tells GSE

The Bank of Ghana has urged the Ghana Stock Exchange to encourage the listing of more female-owned and run businesses as well as promote diversity in the management and boards of listed companies, with a fair representation of women.

“We must encourage more women to take advantage of emerging technologies to run their businesses and to improve their access to finance. We must harness the opportunities presented by the rapid growth of mobile money to make more finance available to women in the informal sector and encourage them to formalise their economic activities”, Second deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Elsie Addo Awadzie said at the “Ring the Bell for Gender Equality 2019” in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation.

She said the Bank of Ghana is an equal-opportunities employer that is committed to fostering an all-inclusive work place, with equal opportunities for all, including women. “Today, there is a significant number of women in senior leadership positions at the Bank, and Management will continue to promote equity and create an environment where women feel supported to give off their utmost best.”

She noted that Ghana’s financial services industry is blessed with a fair representation of women, adding “Today is a good day to celebrate the contributions of the women who have contributed to the development of Ghana’s financial sector whether in the securities, banking, insurance, and pensions industry.”

She added that the financial industry has a key role to play in helping to remove formal barriers to women’s socio-economic development, chief among which is access to finance. “We must ensure that women are able to access appropriate forms of finance in order to sustain and grow their businesses.”

She urged all to renew the commitment to promoting more balanced representation of women in every way we can.

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is partnering with the Ghana Stock Exchange and over 70 other stock exchanges around the world to “Ring the Bell for Gender Equality”—an initiative linked with International Women’s Day that promotes increased women’s participation in the global economy to catalyze sustainable and inclusive private sector growth.

Accelerating the pace of reforms to ensure gender equality could yield enormous benefits, with the potential to increase global gross domestic product by $12 trillion in the next six years, according to a McKinsey Global Institute report.