The Parliament of Ghana on Tuesday, July 23, 2024, passed the Affirmative Action bill into law.
The Affirmative Action Gender Equity Bill 2024, which has been in and out of Parliament for several years, was finally passed unanimously by the House.
The Affirmative Action Gender Equity Act 2024 is expected to ensure greater representation and participation of women in decision-making processes and governance across various sectors thereby improving the lives of women in the country.
The Minister for Gender and Social Protection, Dakoa Newman moved the motion for the passage and the vote in the House.
The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin implored MPs to do more to ensure true equity and commit themselves to the new Act.
He stated “Don’t just celebrate and really put in place the vision that we have created for the country. But more importantly, I hope that members will commit themselves to the constitutional reforms. We need to do more to be able to create this free and just society we are looking for to liberate more of our women to be able to support us to be able to develop mother Ghana’’.
Clause one of the new Act spells out the objective of the law which is: To ensure the attainment of gender equity in the political, social, economic, educational, and cultural spheres of society, the implementation of this Act and the achievement of the targets shall be progressive and subject to evaluation in accordance with the First Schedule, the Government shall promote policies and programmes to redress the political, social, economic and educational gender imbalance.
The law also seeks to encourage efforts towards addressing socio-cultural, political, economic, and educational gender imbalances in private and public sectors, per Clause 4 of Article 17 of the 1992 Constitution.
Its objective is to promote the progressive increase and active participation of women in public and active life from a minimum of 30 percent by 2030, under the requirements of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
-BY Daniel Bampoe