Bolgatanga, March 10, GNA – Ms Lena Naaso, a Gender Advocate, has encouraged women to eschew fear and cultivate self-confidence to fight cultural and societal biases to achieve gender parity.
She asked them to be conscious of gender biases, discrimination and stereotyping against women and work to break those barriers to unearth their potentials for growth and development.
“As women we need to believe in ourselves that we can do what we want to do, we can be who we want to become, we can build our future ourselves because when we acknowledge that these things are limiting our growth and we agree we can do it, we will be able to do it,” she said.
Ms Naaso, who is also a Social Worker, was speaking to women groups at Bolgatanga as part of activities marking the International Women’s Day, on the theme: “Gender Equality Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow.”
It was organised by the Regional Directorate of the Ghana Enterprise Agency (GEA), in collaboration with the Leadafrique, a Non-Governmental Organisation.
The International Women’s Day aims at recognising the contribution of women to societal transformation and how challenges confronting their growth and development could be addressed to attain gender equality and equity.
Ms Naaso said women had the potential to contribute significantly to transforming the Ghanaian economy when given the necessary support but they had, over the years, been discriminated against.
Apart from the gender responsive programmes and policies government needed to roll out to support women, Parliament, as a matter of urgency, needed to pass the Affirmative Action Bill into law to help the cause of women in the country.
Mr Bukari Mohammed, the Regional Manager, GEA, said the Agency had supported women who run small and medium scale enterprises to empower them economically.
“When you empower women with leadership skills and other interventions and they are able to expand their businesses, they introduce more businesses because statistics have indicated that the micro businesses driven by women are those creating employment,” he added.
He, therefore, called for concerted efforts from all stakeholders to invest towards empowering women by building their capacities in leadership and creating the enabling environment to realise their potentials.
GNA