Participants at the workshop at the University for Development Studies(UDS)
The Kazuhiko Takeuchi Centre for Sustainability and Resilience of the University for Development Studies(UDS) has organized a workshop on a study on Women’s empowerment and nutrition in the country.
Hamdiyah Alhassan (Ph.D.), Abdul Hanan Abdullah (Ph.D.), and Mensah Tawiah Cobbinah (MPhil), all lectures of the University for Development Studies(UDS) surveyed 1,492 households and interviewed government officials in charge of infrastructure development on their views in terms of the influence of the use of market and storage facilities on women’s empowerment and nutrition.
The main objective of the study was to examine the impact of physical infrastructure (i.e market and storage facilities) use on women’s empowerment, gender equality, and nutrition in Ghana.
It was also to examine the impact of physical infrastructure use on women’s empowerment and gender equality, analyze the impact of physical infrastructure use on household food security as well as analyze the impact of physical the infrastructure used for the nutrition of women and children.
Director of the Kazuhiko Takeuchi Centre for Sustainability and Resilience of the University for Development Studies(UDS), Hamdiyah Alhassan (Ph.D.) at the workshop, recommended that government and interested investors should invest in both market and storage infrastructures to help improve food security and nutrition, empower women and close the gender gap.
She also noted that to accelerate and sustain the use of physical infrastructure (i.e., market and storage facilities), other infrastructures such as electricity and piped water should be developed and made available to households.
“Households, on the other hand, must be given information about both physical infrastructures to encourage their use to support policies that promote women’s empowerment, gender equality, and nutrition.”
According to her, policies that support household participation in social groups are required to encourage the usage of physical infrastructures, and interventions should be directed towards boosting the asset base and income security of households to achieve the full potential of using the physical infrastructure.
“ When women get market access, they can buy different kinds of food and if they have cold storage facilities they will be able to keep the perishable food and they can use it when they want so with this we can get access to the nutritious diet which is very important in our economic growth because if you have health citizens it will lead to sustainable economic growth as well as increasing incomes of women and when women have more income they are independent and can make decisions that will enhance the country as a whole and we hope these findings will help inform policies and practice.”
She appealed to the government to consider women in general when drafting policies regarding market and storage facilities.
“It’s good to build roads, and irrigation facilities but in doing this government must take women into consideration because concentrating on one aspect of infrastructure development will not help us gain the maximum benefit but when we complement the market facilities with storage facilities it will enable women to get access to nutritious diets in the market.”
FROM Eric Kombat, Tamale