Former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, has emphasized the need for the youth to be sensitized on gender equality at all levels.
She believes the effective sensitization of the youth will help “grow up the society to appreciate the capabilities of women in the society.” Speaking at the International Women’s day celebration under the theme “Be bold for change” in Accra, she said : “it is important that as individuals who believe in the empowerment of women and making the sexes equal, to see how we can get the young people to appreciate who women are.
All these are part of growing up the society so that they can appreciate what a woman is made up of and how capable they are.” She stated that, for Ghana to get to the point where the rights of women are equally recognized and enforced, “we need to look at things differently.” “A change of mentality, it is not one day, it is not twenty years, it may even be a 100 years, we don’t know because we may even have a leader who will come into a country and will help to propagate the Gender issue, women’s issues and so women’s issues start moving forward, then you will have another one who doesn’t really care, thinks a few people dotted around as Ministers is enough, and you will have some who will live by example and some who don’t really mind and so you can move forward and backward in a number of ways that can create its own problems,”she added.
She believes the men must also rally behind the women to ensure women across the country are empowered. “For a long time, we started talking about affirmative action. Affirmative action is important because it corrects the imbalances of a society or a group, so to be able to do that, we must accept that there are some discrepancies and injustices going on.
We are 52.8 percent of the population. The loudest group are the 48 percent. They should be brought along with us. We cannot deal with empowerment of women alone, we must let the men talk about empowerment of women.” “We must let them understand that when your daughter becomes empowered, it’s a plus for you the father, it’s a plus for you the husband as well. It is a mythical fear that needs to be dealt with.
Nobody should fear women. Encourage us to be what we can be because if women being 52 percent of the population, rise up to the level where men are, we will see the changes that will happen in this country.”
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