Community Dialogue Session on Women’s empowerment ends

The Deputy Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Mr John Alexander Ackon, has said empowering women to participate fully in all aspects of life was key to national development.

He said this at a day’s Community Dialogue Session on Women’s Empowerment, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence and Teenage Pregnancy at Winneba.

It was organized by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and attended by a cross-section of people including school children, heads of departments, religious leaders, chiefs and parents.

He said unequal power relations among men and women, boys and girls were largely the root causes of sexual and gender-based violence, adding that these had perpetuated male dominance and control over women.

Mr Ackon said the ills of sexual violence had resulted in unwanted pregnancies and sometimes sexually transmitted diseases and this had led to unsafe abortion, school dropout and in some cases death.

He said it was for these and others that the Ministry was working to get women empowered in all aspects of life by putting in place policies and legal framework to protect the interest of women.

Mr Ackon said the Ministry collaborated with implementing partners to give scholarships to needy girls to pursue technical courses in technical institutes.

He said 68 women with fistula had been treated and reintegrated into their families. The Omanhene of Effutu, Neenyi Ghartey VII, who chaired the programme, appealed to parents to invest properly in their children’s education to enable them before useful citizens in future.