The Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Aaron Mike Oquaye has said that the country must adopt some measures to increase the participation of women in the country’s politics.
He said affirmative action could be one of the ways to increase women participation in politics for the country to catch up with the agenda of the all-inclusive government.
Prof Oquaye was speaking in Accra at an Alumni Lecture by the University of Ghana as part of its 70th-anniversary celebration.
The Lecture was on the theme: “Strengthening Democracy and Good Governance in Contemporary Ghana: Some Challenges.”
He said affirmative action is an instrument of social engineering to cater for some wrong done by the society that needs to be corrected adding that, “this is the essence of lawmaking; the law is an instrument of mischief correction.”
The Speaker of Parliament said one of the challenges that have characterized the democratization process in Ghana is the low number of women in politics.
He said the participation of women in Ghanaian politics has moved at a snail’s pace, a situation which needed to look at for inclusive democratization critically.
Prof Oquaye said regarding constituency participation, from 1960 to date, women representation in Parliament had not been anything to boast of.
What he said in 1960, women representation in parliament was 9.6 percent, in 1965, it rose to 18.2 percent and declined again to 0.7 percent in 1969.
In 1979, 1992, 1996, 2000, women representation in Parliament were 3.5 percent, 9 percent, and 9.5 percent respectively, he said.
He added that in 2000, the representation of women in parliament was 9.5 percent, 10.8 percent in 2004, 9.3 percent in 2006, 10.9 percent in 2012 and 12.7 percent.
Prof Oquaye said a worldwide ranking of women participation in governance pegged Ghana at 143rd position out of 193 countries surveyed.
The country, according to the Speaker of Parliament came behind countries in African like Rwanda (first in Africa), South Africa, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Uganda, Burundi, Namibia and Sudan among others.
He said the list shows that Ghana has got a long way to go about promoting women participation in the country’s politics and urgent steps must be taken to address the challenge.
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Source: GNA
