The Savannah Women Integrated Development Agency (SWIDA-Gh), a gender advocacy civil society organization has organized a forum in collaboration with the office of the Women Commissioner for the Tamale Technical University (TaTU) to discuss the teething biases undermining women progress and development in the society and possible ways to solve these issues.
The Communication and Gender Officer of SWIDA-Gh, Ms Kadija Abdul Somed, said the gathering was also a platform to celebrate the achievements of women and reflect on ways for a sustainable future with women in leadership.
“SWIDA thought it very wise to mark this day because we do have a lot of women from the northern space who deserve to be celebrated. Secondly, it is a platform and time for us to reflect on how far we have come as a region when it comes to women development and to think ahead on ways we can ensure that women are empowered to make the impact that we need to see” she said.
Image of women improving
According to her, the image of the northern woman has improved over the years but “there is a certain point we want to get to where people see the northern women and do not have those funny understandings of who she is”.
She indicated the theme for the celebration focuses on breaking the biases and looking at the most important ways to push for a gender equal world for a sustainable tomorrow.
“This is a conversation that we must have as northerners as well because we have the resource; human resource is now one of the critical resources that we need in every part of the country and for the north here, SWIDA Ghana decided to make resources persons who can make us understand what the biases currently are, how we can solve those biases and also look at ways we engage men in this whole conversation because we’re towards a world that tries to let us appreciate both men and women” she emphasized.
Women in leadership
However, the SWIDA Gender Officer noted one of the issues that came up during the discussion had to do with women in leadership and the fact that there are still people who feel women should not be in leadership.
In view of this, Ms Kadija encouraged the public to see value in women and push them regardless of the sociocultural barriers.
The 2022 International Women’s Day was commemorated on the theme: Gender Equal World Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow. The IWD is a day marked annually on March 8 to uphold women’s cultural, political and socioeconomic achievements, recognize challenges therein and focus on greater attention on women’s rights and gender equality.
This is line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 5 which promotes Gender Equality.
Meanwhile, the Executive Director of Girls to Women Foundation, Hajia Mariam Iddrisu, for her part said the biases against women are both conscious and unconscious.
“We tend to think that the STEM field is a field for men – a dominated field for men but we need to break that bias and we ourselves as women forms this source of bias for us and so we’re the best people to challenged ourselves that we must break those bias we form against ourselves before our male counterparts and the international community help us to break that bias” she asserted.
The former Sagnarigu Municipal Chief Executive maintained the campaign for women to be in leadership must be a bottom-up approach.
Bias at Basic education
Hajia Mariam said girls must be given equal opportunities to occupy leadership positions at the basic school level, asserting that, headmasters and stakeholders in the educational system do not give girls equal space to contest for leadership positions at that basic level.
In her view, if we want to increase women participation in leadership, in decision-making authorities, we must start it at the basic level and when they are still young.
