The Savannah Women Empowerment Group Ghana (SWEGG) has appealed to governments to reflect and deal with gender based obstacles.
“There is no tool more effective for accelerated development especially in Africa than the empowerment of women,” Ms Amina Montia, Convener of SWEGG told Ghana News Agency in an interview in Accra on Wednesday.
She noted that observation of Women’s Day on March 8 must be used to deal with the gigantic bottlenecks confronting gender empowerment across the continent.
Ms Montia explained that research indicated that equalising access to productive resources between female and male farmers could increase drastically agricultural output in developing countries.
She said some of the barriers to increasing the number of girls and young women in schools arose directly from poverty….stressing that “We have large families and when money is tight, it is most often the boys who are funded for higher education.”
Another obstacle is the concern that allowing boys and girls to attend the same schools beyond a certain age may lead to promiscuity.
Ms Montia said a major effort throughout Ghana was to get more girls and young women into school and completing the education process they were ready to find employment and economic stability.
She said SWEGG was working around the clock in the three northern regions to reform some traditional practices that directly influenced the relations between young men and women.
“The system that requires a young man to pay a large dowry to a young woman’s parents has become distorted by the cash economy we now live in,” Ms Montia stated.
“When young men cannot afford the bride of their choice, they tend to go with many girls and pregnancies and transmission of sexual disease and increase in HIV and AIDS are the result,” She said.
“Parents will always be the primary educators and advisors of their children but if girls grow up with knowledge from education and a sense that they can play an equal and important role in life, these patterns can be adapted to more healthy and positive practices”.
To bring International Women’s Day home to the women and girls of northern Ghana, SWEGG members in all three regions are organizing Junior Women’s Empowerment Clubs for girls.
The year’s theme: “Connecting Girls and Inspiring the Future,” seek to draw attention to girls development and whipping up their desire to aspire to higher heights in life.
