Blogging & Tweeting Day Against Sexual Harassment & Gender Violence

Today is Blogging & Tweeting Day Against Sexual Harassment & Gender Violence in Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon and Syria.

The hope is to call for a change in the rampant harassment that women in these countries face every day.

There will be a meeting by Nazra for Feminist Studies and HarassMap tomorrow, 21st June, 2011 to share thoughts on the blogging and tweeting experience. Location: 44 Talaat Harb St. , Cairo, Egpyt.

Check out the link on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=170454286351470

Coming Soon! The Launch of The Witches of Gambaga

The launch of The Witches of Gambaga is scheduled for Tuesday, 15th February, 2011 at the British Council Hall, Accra, Ghana at 10:00am.

So what is this film about? Curious? Read on!

The Witches of Gambaga is a haunting 55 minute documentary film about a community of women condemned to live as witches in Northern Ghana. Made over the course of 5 years, this disturbing expose is the product of a collaboration between members of the 100 strong community of 'witches', local women's movement activists and feminist researchers, united by their interest in ending abusive practices and improving women's lives in Africa. Painful experience and insight combine to generate a uniquely intimate record of the lives of women ostracized from their communities. Told largely by the women themselves, their incredible stories and struggles are rendered comprehensible to a wide range of audiences by the director’s narration. Completed in July 2010, Fadoa Films Ghana and UK, Directed by Yaba Badoe, Co-produced by Yaba Badoe and Amina Mama.

• Winner, 2010 Black International Film Festival Best Documentary Award.
• Has been selected to be screened at FESPACO 2011
  

REVIEWS of The Witches of Gambaga

"An excellent exploration of how women are victimized ...a valuable resource for understanding how to end this problem." Cornelius Moore, California Newsreel

“An admirably unsensational but powerfully affecting reminder of the terrible influence still wrought by superstition on the lives of so many women.” Geoff Andrew, film critic, British Film Institute

“A brave and brilliant production” Hope for the African Village Child Trust

“...will go a long way to promote the rights of women...” African Women’s Development Fund


Click here to see the trailer of the film on You Tube.



Yaba Badoe is a Ghanaian-British documentary filmmaker and writer. A graduate of King’s College Cambridge, she worked as a civil servant in Ghana before becoming a General Trainee with the BBC. She has taught in Spain and Jamaica and has worked as a producer and director making documentaries for the main terrestrial channels in Britain. Her short stories have been published in Critical Quarterly and in African Love Stories: an anthology edited by Ama Ata Aidoo.In 2009, her first novel, True Murder was published by Jonathan Cape. Her TV credits include: Black and White, a ground-breaking investigation into race and racism in Bristol, using hidden video cameras for BBC1; I Want Your Sex, for Channel 4 and a six-part series, VSO, for ITV. African Love Stories is now available in Swedish from Tranan publishers under the title Kärlek x 21.



Amina Mama is a Nigerian feminist activist, researcher and scholar, who has lived and worked Nigeria, South Africa, Britain, the Netherlands and the USA. She spent 10 years establishing the University of Cape Town’s African Gender Institute and is founding editor of the African journal of gender studies, Feminist Africa. She authored Beyond the Masks: Race, Gender and Subjectivity (Routledge 1995), Women’s Studies and Studies of Women in Africa (CODESRIA, 1996), and co-edited Engendering African Social Sciences (CODESRIA 1997). She is currently developing a transnational activist research initiative on gender and militarism and pursuing her interest in documentary film. ‘The Witches of Gambaga’ is her first film.
She currently lives in Berkeley and works at University of California, Davis as Professor and Director of Women and Gender Studies.

What is Women's Empowerment?

Through the various projects, the Pathways of Women's Empowerment have been learning about women's empowerment in different contexts and how they translate into women's everyday lives, policy interactions among others.

Below are videos interviews of some the researchers of the West Africa hub talking about what they understand by women's empowerment and what has come up in their research work in relation to women's empowerment.

Takyiwaa Manuh


Akosua Adomako Ampofo



Dzodzi Tsikata



Awo Asiedu



Nana Akua Anyidoho


Akosua Darkwah



What is your own understanding of women's empowerment? What experiences, observations or research has informed your definition of women's empowerment?

Do share your thoughts,
Akofa.

Women suffer from forced eviction

Women suffer from forced eviction
The Ghanaian Times; Tuesday, June 15, 2010; Page 22 (Regional News)
No author indicated

A human right advocate on Women and Housing for Africa has painted a pathetic picture of how women and children suffer force eviction either by individual landlords, groups and government.

“Women spend their time in slums, work, care for children and domestic chore; yet they are more affected by poor conditions and threats of evictions,” Ms Agnes Kabajuni, said at a national training workshop for media practitioners on the effective use of the media to promote housing and land rights of women in Ghana.

It was organized by the Centre on Housing Rights and Eviction (COHRE) in partnership with Women, Media and Change (WOMEC), an NGO.

About 40 participants drawn from the print and electronic media attended the workshop.

Ms Kabajuni expressed concern about how women struggles to own a house or land property since most inheritances were owned by men who were either husbands, uncles or brother and did not have anywhere to go when forcibly evicted.

She said women constituted most of the slum dwellers but were inadequately house globally.

Ms Kabajuni noted that most African women found on the streets in rural areas were widows who had been thrown out of their husbands’ houses by either a landlord because the women could not afford the rent or by relatives of the husband who thought it was illegal for women to own houses.

She envisaged equal ownership, access and control of housing between men and women across the globe for people to live in peace, security and dignity, adding, “Housing is a right for everyone, everywhere.”

Ms Sylvia Noagbesenu, a COHRE officer indicated that all persons who undertake evictions were to be properly identified and evictions should not be undertaken particularly during bad weather or at night.

She said women experience rape, sexual assault before, during, after forced eviction, battering with poor living conditions.

EC’s package for women

EC’s package for women
Daily Graphic, Thursday, 20th May, 2010: Back Page
Daniel Nkrumah

The Electoral Commission (EC) has announced a package to encourage more women to contest in the upcoming district level elections schedule for October 26, this year.

The Women’s Candidates Support Package is set to be introduced, with financia support from the European Union, and it will include training workshops to be attended solely by female candidates.

A Commissioner of the EC, Mrs. Pauline Adobea Dadzawa, disclosed this at a press conference in Accra yesterday.

The press conference, which was on the theme, “The 2010 District Level Election, What is in it for women in Ghana,” was organized by Abantu for Development, Women in Broadcasting and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

She indicated that the package was in recognition of the peculiar challenged women faced. “We at the commission believe that it is not enough to tell women that they are free to avail themselves to be voted for. We also believe that if the odds are weighed heavily against them, accomplishing their goals will be elusive,” she said.

She added that the EC believed that full participation of women in the electoral process was key to the growth of democracy.

“it is our fervent hope that even as we support women in our areas of operation, other methods such as quota representation, may be applied to bridge the gap between numbers of men and women in the political arena,” she added.

She advised women candidates to resist the temptation of being discouraged or confused with provocative remarks and questions and urged them to rather maintain their focus and speak on the issues.

Mrs. Dadzawa stated that the EC would deepen it commitment to encourage women to participate in the forthcoming elections.

She said that this was in line with its policy of gender mainstreaming, a conscious effort would be made, where possible, to give priority to the recruitment of women as temporary poll workers. She said the temporary toll workers to be employed for the district elections included returning officers, presiding officers, coordinating presiding officers and polling assistants.

The Deputy Chairman in charge of Programmed at the National Commission of Civic Education (NCCE), Mr Baron Y. Amoafo, stated that in 2005, with the support of the Democratic Governance Thematic Trust Fund (DGTTF), the NCCE, the EC and the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs undertook intensive leadership training programmed for potential women candidates for the 2006 district level elections.

He added that in order to ensure a sustainable plan for effective women’s participation in governance, the NCCE, through its civic education clubs in senior secondary schools (SHSs), also undertook an intensive tour of selected SHSs throughout the country to whip up enthusiasm among young female students to be interested in taking up leadership positions in the near future.

He indicated that the NCCE had already captured in its plan for the public education on the 2010 district level elections programmes to empower women to participate actively in the elections.

He said it would also hold a capacity-building programme for it staff to cover issues on gender inequality and a number of programmes to enhance women’s participation in the upcoming district level elections.

The Resident Director of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Daniela Kuzu, noted that the fact that Ghana had signed the UN Convention on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the establishment a Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs was an indication that the country was taking the issues of gender equality seriously.

She, however, stated that the country’s performance in terms of gender equality needed to be improved significantly. “To take the national elections of 2004 and 2008 as an example, it is of concern that in 2004 only 10.8 percent of the seats in parliament were taken by women. In 2008, it was even reduced to 7.89 per cent,” she stated.

MOWAC to re-position itself: Towards Beijing Platform for Action

MOWAC to re-position itself: Towards Beijing Platform for Action
Daily Graphic; Tuesday, May 11, 2010; Page 11 (Gender and Children)
Rebecca Quaico-Duho

The Ministry of women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC) is taking steps to re-position itself to help accelerate Ghana’s progress made in implementing the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA).

According to the sector minister, Mrs. Juliana Azumah-Mensah, Ghana organised a side event which is on the theme, “Beyond commitment to responsive institutional structures,” at the just ended meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), held in New York.

She said participants had the opportunity to share Ghana’s perspective and experiences on the evolution of the national women’s machinery and how it plans to promote gender equality through re-engineering the ministry and involving women at the grass-roots level.

She was speaking at a forum organised in Accra by MOWAC in collaboration with the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and supported by the United Nations Systems, during which a statistical compendium on women and men were launched.

Mrs. Azumah-Mensah who convened the meeting to brief the public on the outcome of the CSW meeting at a forum in Accra, said a lot of programmes and policies, spearheaded by MOWAC and other ministries such as the Ministry of Health (MOH), were commended as having contributed to the empowering of women socially, economically and politically.

This year’s CSW meeting also coincided with the fifteenth-years review of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and its contribution to the achievements of the MDGs.

Programmes such as the issuances of policy directive to public sector agencies to roll out gender responsive budgets across ministries, departments, and agencies, as well as the ministry’s coordination with 16 key sectors such as the Ministry of Health, Agriculture and Education were hailed as a good practice.

She also said MOWAC’s central management roles and the elevation of the ministry to Cabinet status were seen as an outstanding achievement. Other participants expressed interest in selling the idea to their countries.

Other achievements such as the enactment of the Domestic Violence and human Trafficking Acts, criminalization of sexual offences and the passage of laws on women’s rights in marriage and divorce, social protection policies targeting poor women, the National Health Insurance Scheme, free school uniforms for school children and the Health Service Act, which ensured free maternal care to help in addressing the country’s high maternal mortality, and the appointment of women into key positions were all commended.

She said the Commission wrapped up the 54th session by adopting several resolutions which were key to women’s empowerment and they were issues on women’s economic empowerment, women and girl child and HIC and AIDS, protecting women and girls form harmful practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM), elimination of maternal mortality and a decision to consolidate four existing offices working in issues related to gender under the United Nations into a composite gender entity.

The Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Analysis (CEPA), Mr. Joseph S. Abbey, a guest speaker who spoke on ‘the importance of gender statistics for development,’ underscored the importance of having more women in decision-making positions so that they would speak for women.

He said the country would be wasting a lot of resources, if the potential of women, who formed the majority of the country’s population, was not tapped, saying, “Investment made in women should be utilised to ensure maximum returns.”

He said statistics over the years did not quantify the work of women, especially in domestic settings, and pointed out that it made it difficult to appreciate the input of women in national development.

Mr. Abbey said it was essential that the country gathered separate data for men and women so that the country would know the needs of boys and girl and men and women. This, according to him, would enable the government to build appropriate infrastructure such as clinics and school and that the gender dimensions of all these had not been focused on in the country.

The Chief Director of MWAC, Ms Nancy Dzah, in a welcoming address said as institutions and organisations promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in the country, it was important that, “we avail ourselves of the global, regional and national trends of achievements and challenges confronting us in our zeal to achieve the MDG3, which is: Promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment.”

An international gender consultant and chairperson of the programme, Mrs Jane Amavi Kwaku, said Ghana had become a flagship of achieving results in many areas and it could not afford to fail in the empowerment of women.

Representatives of Parliament, MDAs, the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service, who were at the CSW meeting in New York, gave their impression about the way forward for MOWAC.

GSS develop handbook on gender statistics

GSS develop handbook on gender statistics

Daily Graphic, Thursday, 6th May, 2010: Page 11; (Gender and Children)
Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has developed a handbook on gender statistics which reflects the relative levels and differentials between women and men, and girls and boys in terms of education, health, politics, and access to credits among others.

The statistical compendium on women and men is a collection of concise, but detailed gender-sensitive indicators, which will help the formulation of policies in the country.

The Minister for Women and Children’s Affairs, Mrs. Juliana Azumah-Mensah, whop launched the handbook at a programme in Accra, said the collection of sex deaggregated data was vital to women’s development in the country.

She said such data was essential to enable the country to track the progress made so far in attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The minister said such data was also important to ministries, departments and agencies, since it would help them implement the gender budgeting strategy, which had been introduced by the government effectively.

Giving some highlights on the book, the minister said it dealt with household leadership and divorce, school enrollment for males and females at various levels of education, illiteracy among men and women and power and influence.

She said the statistical compendium showed that 23 per cent of female-headed household were divorced women and 51 per cent of women in the country were illiterates.

On the issue of power and influence, she said the result were nothing to write home about, and that a huge gap still existed between men and women in the decision-making process, adding that there was the need to encourage more women into politics.

She, therefore, advised women who were interested in politics to participate in active politics at the various levels, to get more women in the country’s decision-making process.

A Chief Statistician at the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), Mr. Baah Wadieh, who made a presentation on, “The status of the provision of gender statistics,” said developing gender statistics required that the statistical processes should be applied diligently when acquiring the data.

He said such gender-sensitive data should not be merely indicators which had been compiled and presented by sex, although it was a fundamental requirement, but should also signal gender-related changes in a condition or phenomenon over time, shed light on social processes and interventions and how these affect women and men and their relationship with one another.

He said gender statistics were one of the basic requirements of the Beijing Declaration, which calls on national, regional and international statistical institutions to “ensure that statistics related to individuals are collected, compiled, analysed and presented by sex, and age, and reflect problems, issues and questions related to women and men in society.”

The Government Statistician, Dr. Grace Bediako, said the statistical compendium would help the country gain insight into how far it had advanced, saying that, “we need to be able to assess what gains we have made” and also identify where there were problems. She said the handbook would help the country learn from its successes in terms of gender equality, empowerment and equity, and also bring out the disappointing results so that they could be dealt with.

Dr. Bediako said nationally and globally, it was difficult to see the achievements on the field, and that many organisations found it necessary to have ‘gender’ as a component of their programmes, instead of mainstreaming it into all facets of public and private life, decision-making and prorammes.

She bemoaned the fact that two-and-a-half decades after the adoption of the MDGs, with MDG 3 calling for the promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women, “we still have to remind policy makers that gender equality is a rights issue like poverty and survival.”

She said as a country, “we have an opportunity with the upcoming population and housing census to improve our database for the MDGs,” and that many of the questions for the census would provide the basis for computing the indicators required.

Dr. Bediako, however, said the country still needed to explore all potential sources, censuses, samples surveys and administrative records to provide the complete picture.