A mother and her baby girl in hospital
After days of conducting separate interviews with some health workers from Bolgatanga, Bongo and Talensi Districts in the Upper East Region, DAILY GUIDE is in the position to confirm that there are still a large number of educated men, who do not count their baby girls among their children and so do not invest in their development.
It may sound funny and untrue, but the health workers interviewed said it was real as they witness men – educated and uneducated – abandoning their wives at health facilities when they noticed they had delivered baby girls.
In many cases men found in this situation are believed to be living with the old mentality that women belong to their husbands’ family and men belong to their fathers’ household or family, hence the desire to have more boys to inherit the father’s property and keep his name alive after his demise.
Those in the traditional settings also wish to have boys so that in their old age when they can no longer perform sacrifices to their gods, the boys will do that on their behalf. For these people, nothing will change their minds about the importance of both boys and girls to their families.
Desperate men found in this situation always resort to marrying more women thinking that it’s women that determine the sex of a child. They ignore counsel on the need to train their girls to also become useful to their families and society. Others who do not want to marry more women also resort to impregnating their wives soon after delivery, with the hope that they would get a baby boy.
A Health Practitioner and Peer Educator, Margaret Awuni, is among some health workers who are educating the public on the need to accept and appreciate both boys and girls and the need to empower them all to be able to take up leadership roles in future.
According to her, while working in rural areas, she came across this situation many times and the situation has not changed even at the Bolgatanga Municipality.
Margaret Awuni, who works with the Presbyterian Health Services and speaks on radio,  has been educating the public on the need to empower the youth to become self-reliant and responsible adults and community leaders in future, under a project dubbed “Get Up and Speak Out”.
The “Get Out and Speak Out” project is being implemented in seven districts across the Upper East and Northern Regions.
A leading member of NGOs in Health and a Youth Counsellor, Alagskoma Asakeya Noble, in an interview with the DAILY GUIDE, confirmed that indeed many men are culprits, especially men who still uphold their traditional beliefs, contrary to modern day belief that boys and girls are all a blessing to a family.
In his view, no one can take away the feeling and mindset of these men against the girl-child, saying, “… our hope is that the young ones will not copy this behaviour and will accept the fact that women too can play important roles at home, in the external family and even in their communities and the country in general. We see women supporting their aged parents and embarking on a lot of community development activities in recent times.”
From; Ebo Bruce-Quansah, Bolgatanga