2010 National Gender Forum
|
|
Background
Despite the central role women continue to play in the economic development
of Ghana, they have a much more limited access to resources than their male
counterparts. Societal attitudes, customary practices and beliefs,
traditional roles of women, gender relations within the family, limited
access of women to education and training and inadequate representation of
women on decision making bodies, among others, operate together to place
Ghanaian women in a disadvantaged position. Currently although women form
over 50% of the population their share of political and public office
appointments is less than adequate and there continues to be poor female
representation and voice in private and public life in Ghana.
Good and inclusive governance has gained credence in development cooperation
and planning as a way of ensuring that processes and outcomes are effective
and yielding expected results. Against the backdrop of ongoing discourse on
aid effectiveness and sustainable development, government and development
practitioners have been encouraged to institute measures that promote the
effective, inclusive and democratic delivery of development interventions.
Undoubtedly, the gains from over a decade of development reforms have also
impacted to some degree, gender equality especially with regard to legal,
policy and programming reforms. The expanded interventions in social policy
and services have been enabling for gender equality work. Succeeding
Ghanaian governments, civil society and donors have increasingly responded
to gender equity commitments through targeted programming, policy reforms
and institution building. The women’s lobby has become an important
political consideration and gender equality and women’s rights activism has
probably enjoyed the most enabling period in its history. However, there
still remain unexplored spaces and unyielding challenges that need serious
attention in the years/decades ahead.
As a donor funded initiative, G-rap works to complement ongoing national
development programmes, which are currently geared toward growth and poverty
reduction as enshrined in the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS II)
by enhancing gender sensitivity in its support for sustainable and equitable
development. Support for RAOs is intended to capacitate them to contribute
more effectively to the promotion of pro-poor programming in Ghana. As part
of its contribution to effective pro-poor programming, G-rap recognizes the
critical role of social equity and the place of gender in it, and promotes
good governance and poverty reduction. It is against this background that
G-rap as a key facilitator to such efforts should create a platform to
promote the sharing of gains and challenges in gender equality even as
commitments are renewed, new agenda are set and strategies are revised for
the years ahead. Equally important is the need to document existing
experiences for mass dissemination.
