Hafsa Obeng
Accra, March 8, GNA – The Aya Institute for Women, Politics and Media says gender diversity must be the main consideration in the selection of human resources in any functional democracy as all talents and professions are harnessed for national development.
“We must see gender equality as a significant part of the national agenda and work assiduously and be focused to work to achieve gender equality,” it said in a release issued to the Ghana News Agency on Saturday.
On the commemoration of the International Women’s Day (IWD) celebration, the institute said panel diversity was also a global concern as the World Economic Forum 2020 reported that 86 per cent of global speakers were men while women had 14 per cent.
The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2020 also revealed that Africa’s media operates with an overwhelming dominance of male speakers, drowning and overshadowing the expertise and voices of women.
“This underrepresentation is evident in the lack of gender diversity in the use of experts by the media, at conferences and other speaker opportunities and platforms. Panels constituted are especially non-gender sensitive on media platforms,” it said.
According to the 2024 Ghana Women Experts Report, only 14 per cent of experts in the Ghanaian media were women with some media houses recording as low as three per cent female expert representation.
The Ghanaian media, despite the genuine challenge of raising women speakers in major socio-economic programming, must be committed to gender diversity in panel selection.
This year’s theme: ‘Accelerate Action’ is for reflection of the journey of gender equality and the need for actual commitments towards it.
The release said: “Ghana has successfully elected its first woman vice president, a symbolic feat that has further consolidated our democracy. Again, the Affirmative Action Bill was passed into law in the last quarter of 2024. The 2024 elections saw a slight increase in the number of women representatives elected.”
This year’s IWD marks three decades since the Beijing Conference in 1995, where Ghana first participated as the first step of commitment towards gender equality.
“While we are still working towards parity, we must celebrate significant leaps that have been recorded within the gender space in Ghana,” it said.
“According to the World Bank’s Women, Business and Law Index 2024, significant representation of women in politics further positions a country to huge investments needed to push it forward economically.”
The World Bank’s ‘Representation Matters Report’ 2025 also indicates that women’s political representation is closely linked to the promotion of legal equality of economic opportunity.
The report suggested that only if women had significant representation, they would achieve legal equality of economic opportunity and unlock the benefits and economic improvements thereof.
“In celebration of the IWD, let us keep working to achieve gender diversity, to ensure that our collective efforts will yield the best outcomes towards an equal and fairer society where women’s voices, talents and achievements are recognized, and made visible to make our democracy properly situated and functional.”
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