Mrs. Sanny addressing participant at the forum
Seven out of 10 Ghanaians want women to have equal opportunities of being elected to political office, a survey conducted by Afrobarometer, has revealed.
The report of the survey which was carried out in 2017, disclosed that 72 per cent of Ghanaians wanted women to have a chance of being elected into political office while 24 per cent were of the view that men made better leaders than women and so should be elected ahead of women.
“Men are almost twice as likely as women to say men make better leaders than women (31 per cent against 17 per cent).
A related interview-based survey which was also conducted by the organisation among 2,400 respondents between September 16 and October 3, 2019 also showed that 71 per cent of men made decisions about how household money was spent by themselves as against 61 per cent of women who were likely to defer decision-making power to their spouses.
Speaking to the findings of the research in Accra at a CDD-Ghana forum on Feminism, a lead researcher of the survey, Josephine Appiah Nyameekye, attributed the gender gap primarily to societal pressures which contributed to gender differences in personality traits as men tended to be more assertive and dominant, whereas women were more communal and nurturing.
The forum which took place on Wednesday, March 4, 2020, was held under the theme, “Are there new approaches in the push for gender equality?”
A panelist at the programme, Professor Audrey Gadzekpo, said even though the laws of the country do not discriminate on the basis of gender, affirmative action was still needed to “give life to the laws” so the negative attitudes towards equality for all could be remedied.
She urged gender advocates working at demistifying “feminism” label in order to have more people “embrace it to act in ways that make people understand that feminism is about wanting equality and changing the status quo.”
“If indeed you are a feminist, your starting point is social justice and equality. Because of your experience in engaging in that kind of struggle, you ought to be sensitive to other struggles,” she added.
A gender advocate and a lecturer at Webster University of Ghana, Kobina Ankomah-Graham, also mentioned the need for a conscientious effort towards the re-socialization of men to understand that carrying out certain roles should not be gender laden.
“Our fathers come from a different time and a lot is going on that they don’t understand. From a man’s perspective, it is like the fathers are learning same as their sons in this rapidly changing world,” he said.
By Issah Mohammed