ABANTU spearheads women politics

ABANTU for development in collaboration, with Women in Broadcasting (WIB) and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) has developed a number of strategic actions to highlight women’s rights to participate and contest in the upcoming 2010 district level election.
In this vein, ABANTU has decided to hold series of monthly conferences on the theme ‘District level elections 2010, what is in for women in Ghana,’ to campaign for active participation of women in politics.

Hon Kakra Vanlare, Municipal Chief Executive for Adenta Constituency, addressing journalists at a press conference in Accra said these workshops will be held monthly to bring women to the limelight in political events.

She said the women’s organisation under the Women’s Manifesto Coalition (WMC) actively participated in the consultation process and came out with relevant gender responsive proposals for consideration.

This, she said, means that women are very much interested in the policy issues of Ghana’s decentralised system.
“It is important that women have a public platform to deliberate on their concerns in an open and transparent atmosphere in order to obtain policy responses that will impact positively on gender equality issues of representation and substantive redress of their concerns,” noted the Adenta MCE.

According to her, the local governance system, which was introduced in 1988, has recently been subjected to a nationwide consultation review and its performance assessed within the twenty- year period of its implementation.

With this, she explained that broad nature of the consultation has afforded different groups of people the opportunity to express their views and opinions about aspects of the system that need reform.

“In spite of the numerous challenges confronting women in their struggle to bring about equality and social justice, women all over the world would have to come together to mobilize in order to overcome obstacles that come their way,” she maintained.

Mrs Vanlare said as Ghana strives to institutionalise political pluralism, the principle of integrating women as participants and beneficiaries in planning and policy making processes become more prudent.