This time every year, the global community takes time to highlight issues concerning women.
These include celebrating achievements and enumerating challenges.
There have been considerable global efforts directed at extending the agency of women.
National Governments have implemented programmes, enacted bills and refined policies aimed at seeking improvements in the lives of women.
It is the considered view of SDD-Ghana that these are not favours extended to women, but corrective steps to reverse the years of marginalization and disproportionate underrepresentation of women in many political, social, and economic spaces.
The theme for this year’s celebration “Investing in Women: Accelerating Progress” offers significant pointers to what needs to be done beyond celebrations.
This is an invitation to tackle structural, cultural and institutional bottlenecks that have historically conspired to hobble the imperative of ensuring that women have access to economic, social and political resources to create and consolidate agency.
This is an opportune time to call on all stakeholders to expedite action on the passage of the Affirmative Action Bill to give meaning to our commitment to empowering women and enhancing inclusivity.
SDD believes that the passage of the Bill is an important first step to dismantling the barriers that inhibit progress. But SDD also wants to caution that passing the bill should not become an exercise in merely ticking boxes without conscious efforts to address the numerous issues confronting women in society.
As we strive to magnify voices of women, let us ensure that we are not fixating on urban woman, to the exclusion of millions of women who continue to bear the harsh burdens of marginalization, unpaid care work and other subtle and not-so subtle forms of discrimination.
SDD calls on government and all stakeholders to expand the frontiers of the debate and ensure that the micro level issues are highlighted.
SDD also calls on CSOs and development partners to invest time and skills in understanding the different needs of different women with a view to implementing transformative actions that respond to the unique needs of both rural and urban women, urban and rural girls, and literate and non-literate women.
In this way, we will be moving away from the numbers game to concentrating efforts on sustainable outcomes.
SDD takes this opportunity to congratulate all women for the sacrifices and contributions they continue to make towards progress at family, community and national levels. SDD is committed to working with like-minded agencies to enhance inclusivity and fairness.
About SDD Ghana
Savings and Development Dialogue, Ghana (SDD Ghana) envisions a world where diversity inspires actions to create opportunities and enhance inclusion for all people facing barriers.
Our mission is to be a catalyst for positive change, combining inclusive and sustainable development initiatives, research insights and policy influence to transform lives and communities.
SDD operates a hybrid model combining implementation of micro projects with structured generation of evidence and information analysis.
SDD is the ‘People’s Think Tank’, enabling it to accompany communities and groups on the development journey armed with evidence of what works.
The agency adopts innovative, inclusive and inspiring (3is) approaches to tackling development challenges.
Our approach is double-edge, incorporating a business case to social development and specific solutions directed at reducing vulnerability.
Signed.
Dr. Sadat Salifu
Chairman, Board of Trustees
Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana
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