By Stanley Seshie
Do you have a daughter? Has the Ghanaian society offered her enough
visible role models from which she could select? Do you not think the
society is systematically telling her all roads lead to the paparazzi
world entertainment and politics? That it is like being on an island
coming from the cold: the sciences, engineering, mathematics and
technological innovations. Imagine your daughter and her mates
listening to the first Ghanaian female Afronault (An African
astronault) recounting firsthand experience of visiting space. As
other group of women, taking their stand one after another telling
them what it takes to launch space shuttle successfully from the
ground and monitor it to its destination. How the Ghana Observatory
Complex located in the plains of Akosombo near Volta Region is full of
female scientists, engineers and mathematicians engaged in not just
studying the heavens but also developing technologies that are equally
of use here in Ghana and the world at large. Surely, many shall be
inspired to follow their steps and even dream of doing better than
them in areas where society insisted is difficult for women.
Nations have liberated their women, and successfully created the
necessary environment for them to express their inherent intellectual
and emotional capability in politics, philosophy, economics,
mathematics, engineering, arts and sciences. The result is the
impressive development for their nations. Ghana is certainly on
course, doing that across the spectrum of human endeavor. However, it
seems the entire emancipatory machinery towards women is almost all
about leading them into politics and entertainment. As if no option
practically lies beyond these two for the freed and determined woman.
In Ghana, we have fossilized the impression that only those in the
paparazzi world of politics and entertainment industries influence
society. Intransigently woven into our societal consciousness are
conversations that bother on personalities (not even ideas) in
religion, politics as well as entertainment industries than the
mathematics, sciences and engineering. That means our growing
daughters have only women in these avenues to look up to as role
models. The obscuration of the available few in the sciences,
engineering, technological innovations by their counterparts from the
paparazzi landscape dovetailed into the perception.
The result is there are few women to serve as role models in the
sciences and co for our daughters. We all know where to find the
teeming majority of the women. The increasingly disabling environment
of Ghana ensured that the oceanic dungeons of religion naturally
swallowed them up. Yes, they are in the places of worships and
mountaintops solving all the alleged spiritual problems of their
husbands, children, homes, community and nation at large via the
fervency and efficacy of prayer and faith. For a reward, they are seen
as the best role models. You know, a good woman is the praying one.
Else she is but an arrogant if not an outright bad one. Our Ghanaian
society is yet to come to terms with embracing educated women who can
see through the instituted shackles of suppression.
Dr. Aggrey once told us that, for rapid development we need the
educated woman to prosecute the agenda. More than ever in any
generation, our growing daughters need these educated women to emulate
as role models from every intellectual avenue. So doing little in the
comprehensive liberation effort, we are starving our daughters. The
repercussions are their minimal contribution towards national
development. It is time to revamp and oil the emacipatory machinery.
This means the affirmative action groups must cast their net beyond
just fitting them into the paparazzi kitchens.
In addition, whilst we forever hold in high esteem the multitudes of
our hardworking women collectively called "market women", they can no
longer be role models to our daughtets as was the case in the past. A
continuation of that is acceptance and endorsement of national
mediocrity. Notwithstanding the indisputable importance of
agriculture, the world is increasingly moving away from tilling the
ground to mining the mind. The mining avenues of the human mind for
the benefit of a nation are the arts, mathematics and sciences. This
is why you must be worried that we are focussing on only the arts
(religion, politics and entertainment) and neglecting and forgetting
the rest to our own detriments. They have had enough of the musicians,
journalists, politicians and prayer warriors saturating and dominating
the society for far too long as the only visible role models.
The sky is no longer the limit for humanity for the paparazzi world to
be our daughters' limit. We do not even know if there is a limit at
all. Our daughters must be encouraged to join the open inexhautible
explorative kitchens of the sciences, mathematics, engineering and
technological innovations in addition to the arts to prepare their
intellectual meal for our national consumption and development. That
means we have need women from those areas to also make themselves
visible. In addition to the numerous female groups focussing on the
paparazzi world, we also need a group like Ghana Association of Women
Engineers, Mathematicians and Scientists (GAWEMS) to prosecute and
disseminate the urgent message of seeding and harvesting these crops
of daughters for the nation. We need them.
Email: seshiehanku@gmail.com
Whatsapp: 0508951323
