The issue of women empowerment
has been given much media attention in recent times. On March 25, Dr Kofi Amoah
and the management of Citizen Kofi with support from the Media Foundation for
West Africa World Bank Ghana Office, organized series of dialogues on how the
Ghanaian media portray women. Two days before that on March 23, Myjoyfmonline
published a rather flowery speech by Kwaku Sakyi-Addo, the renowned Ghanaian
journalist, at the Legon Center for International Affairs (LECIA) on the theme,
“Women Empowerment: Empowering the 21st Century woman to transform her
community”. He concluded his speech in part by a powerful statement, “I believe
this century will not be China’s… It will not be Africa’s century either. This
is the Woman’s Century”.
The Woman’s Century? Well,
after reading his speech, I paused for a moment to ask myself some hard
questions: Was Kwaku Sekyi-Addo simply being overambitious about the prospect
of women claiming the 21st Century? Was he aware of how the ingrained forces of
culture and religion have combined to shape the Ghanaian psyche toward women
and women in leadership positions?
To respond to these questions,
I descended the luxurious ivory tower of intellectual rhetoric to face the
facts and the practicalities of the real Ghanaian world. So what does Women
Empowerment entails, and how do ordinary Ghanaians treat and view women and
women leaders? I will attempt to address these questions using personal
experiences gathered from different parts of Ghana.
During a field trip to Northern
Ghana as an intern at United Nations Development Program/Small Grants Program
(UNDP/SGP) in 2009, I was astonished to learn that women could not inherit
properties from their own parents. They were prohibited from openly expressing
their thoughts in community circles in the presence of men. In fact, the women
could not even shake hands with me or the rest of the team. These
practices were perpetuated not based on anything other than an unearned
natural attribute -- sex. I discovered that the women were systematically
‘programmed’ by their respective societies through early socialization to
be dependent on men. They had no independent self-worth other than that derived
from their husbands’. Once such dependency situation was established through
systematic economic disempowerment, it became much easier for the men to exert
their control, and in most cases, abused women with confidence and impunity.
Although the chasm of ‘institutionalized’ inequality among the sexes may be
wider in some parts of Northern Ghana, the reality is that sex-based
discrimination is a general problem in Ghana as a whole.
In a separate development again
in 2009, I was part of a campaign team determined to break the status quo and
put a woman in the presidency of one traditional hall in University of Ghana.
During that campaign spree, I came to understand fully the psychology of many
college students regarding women and leadership: People did not care about our
candidate’s leadership credibility and potentials. Their chief concern was the
fact that she was a female. Period. They thought it inappropriate for a woman
to seek to become the president of a mixed hall. They hurriedly cited
scriptural quotations to back their dogmatic stance and to show-off how high
they stand on the moral Richter scale. To them, it was a de jure divine
arrangement for a woman to follow instead of lead. These students therefore
deemed the perpetuation and consolidation of such a system of injustice, an act
of obedience to God or Allah. Ironically, not males alone, but some females
also held similar views.
I was not swayed nor amused by
the knee-jerk tendency of these students to dig into their favorite pages in
the scriptures to justify their entrenched position. This was partly because I
was aware that not too long ago in the history of humankind, the same
scriptures were used to justify Apartheid, racism, and ‘holy’ wars against
people of different race, nationality, and religious backgrounds. I also knew
that somewhere in the middle age, a scientist known as Galileo Galilei was
intensely pursued by the Church and eventually forced to renounce his belief
that it was the sun and not the earth that was in the center of the universe.
Galileo was lucky – the Church only excommunicated him. Many scientists and
independent thinkers at the time were burned at the stake for heresy. Why?
Because the Church, inspired by the letters of the scriptures, was convinced
that it was the divine ordering of things for the earth to be placed in the center
of the entire universe. Scriptures such as Ecclesiastes 1:5
which states, "And the sun rises and sets and returns to its place”, was
taken literally. Today, we all know the Church was wrong. However, are we
learning from the past?
College education was meant to
increase our capacity for critical thinking, which will also mean challenging
the status quo if necessary. I personally do not believe it was just and fair
for that University of Ghana woman to be denied the opportunity to attain her
leadership goals and aspirations based on her sex. I also do not buy the idea
that any particular sex is superior or inferior to the other. Just as none
would like to be the victim of a gender-based discrimination, none should
strive to be the privileged either. Should not people be judged based on the
content of their character and not the biological constitution of their
genitalia?
In the context of these mental
blocks on the way to women empowerment in Ghana, does Kwaku Sakyi-Addo’s
optimism about women claiming the 21st Century realistic? I respond in the
affirmative, however, with a clarion call on all institutions in the country to
proactively work to ensure that women are fairly represented at all levels of
society. Religious institutions and their leadership need to take the
lead by challenging the way their members view and treat women. University
institutions and relevant stakeholders should give more research attention to
issues of women empowerment. Relevant policymakers should strengthen the
existing affirmative measures aimed at attracting and supporting women
political leaders. The fact that the media is giving more attention to concerns
of women lately is a promising sign that Ghanaians are slowly moving in the
right direction.
In line with the United Nations
(UN) definition of Women Empowerment, we should all work in concert to
challenge outdated systems of religion-inspired patriarchy, which creates
conditions where women a) do not have access to opportunities and resources b)
are denied the right to influence the direction of social change c) are denied
the right to determine their own choices as they deem fit and, d) are stripped
of their independent self-worth.
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