Affirmative Action Bill: Move towards a truly gender-equal society beyond token representation?

It has always been my way of life to look out for minorities and offer help and or simple recognition whenever necessary. To this end, I have surprisingly been called out several times and chided. Here are three instances: During my undergraduate years, I was once accosted by a coursemate angrily demanding to know why I have time to listen to everyone as I do. Repeatedly quizzing, “What do you want?”

“What do you want?” It was quite a surprising moment for me but I kept quiet for the whole episode passed without saying a word. Here was I, thinking having time to listen to people was a positive trait.

The second incident was me having to ask a delegation led by a Regional Minister to the district where I was working as to why there was no woman represented in the entourage. I think he was pleasantly surprised and assured that he will take note of that with his subsequent visits. However, there were other members present who did not take this lightly and felt the question was inappropriate.

Third, in my work as an HR practitioner, you are almost always at the point of defending staff members. I think this makes higher authority uncomfortable and I have recently been sharply accused of always defending people. Given our kind of environment where authority, a raw show of power and sheer force always seek to trump process and procedure, such posturing may accrue hatred and a lot of personal trouble.

But this is understood. Justice does not come naturally to everyone, especially when it is removed from our personal experience or that of our own significant others. Why should anybody care anyway? Maybe studying Sociology has damaged a lot of natural biases within me. For my undergraduate, my long essay looked into the relationship between the social classes and the incidence of crime within the classes in Ghana. I was in the courtrooms looking through case files, tracing offenders’ family history, job placement, educational attainment, etc. as well as conducting field interviews and interacting with inmates of the Nsawam prisons.

For my MSc, I have written a paper discussing women's political empowerment, looking for ways gender quotas could be legislated to “fast track” increases in women's symbolic representation in the Ghanaian national parliament. Looking back, it's clear I’m naturally drawn to social stratification and inequality studies. These are justice issues but they are also issues borne out of culture, that is, the way of life of a people.

Mostly, what we forget to appreciate is the fact that every social system is a creation of culture. Systems such as how family and marriage are organized, systems of parenting and socialization, economic participation, chieftaincy, religion, health-seeking habits, human rights, peace-building systems, etc. are all cultural creations. They are the evolved aspects of how people have acted

and interacted over time, with some aspects of these actions and interactions evolving to achieve a certain permanence (fitness), which was achieved through unconscious processes.

Moreso, democracy itself as a form of organizing government and politics as practiced here is a cultural creation borrowed and superimposed on the Ghanaian socio-political system that may not have developed or evolved well enough to contain its ideal principles and general tenets. This is obvious when you think of the family as a miniature society where all the forms of social institutions are learned, practiced, internalized, and passed on.

Where democracy is borrowed (adopted) from and thrives, these societies also have very liberal parenting and ka bi na me nka bi family leadership regimes. The point is that when there is no practice of democracy within the family unit (micro), there cannot be any substantive practice of democracy at the observed (macro) societal level. The social forces of action and interaction must

incrementally develop to imbibe that democratic ethos.

The reflections are the same on the reality and practice of a cultural shift in gender equality (G.E). For G.E. to thrive, the gap between the gendered cultural conceptions of what is “man” and “woman” and the attendant role expectations must be consciously reduced at all levels of social life. As is presently the case, it is one of the AU Agenda 2063 wishes to “aspire that by 2063, Africa

shall have an entrenched and flourishing culture of human rights, democracy, gender equality, inclusion, and peace.” (See AU Agenda 2063, Aspiration 4(34), also 3(28), 6(49-52)).

Culture, however, cannot be so legislated; as earlier alluded to, it is an unconscious creation or byproduct birthed out of the everyday action and interaction of a people.

Its creation, however, can be consciously conditioned through advanced social policy engineering spearheaded by the socialization effort of the state directed at the powerful agents of socialization, including the schools, media, religion, the family unit, etc. In this way, the expectations of gender roles will be

systematically targeted, reorientated, abolished, and progressively substituted by a more gender-equal way of thinking, feeling, and acting (doing), which becomes a normal reality/way of life for all.

Consequently, equality of the genders will progressively become the normal “entrenched” way of life of the majority of the population. These are the processes you observe in societies like Sweden, where equality of the genders is lived and experienced in real time in all aspects of social life. It is ubiquitous how both genders in Sweden today enjoy practically equal rights and opportunities and share the same responsibilities in all areas of life. This is how to move G.E. from the conference talk shops to the hearts and minds of the larger population.

Today, it is all excitement with the final passing of the Affirmative Action (Gender Equality) Bill, 2024, which at best seeks “voluntary” buy-in to progressively achieve 50% gender equality across several organizations and sectors such as the Public Services, Security Services, Judiciary, Parliament, Political Parties, Trade Unions and private Private Sector organizations by 2030 within the general aspirations of the UN Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Parliament passing the bill, however, is just the first step towards achieving a truly gender-equal society beyond token representation.