A \u00a0Senior lecturer at the School of Communications Studies of the University of Ghana, Legon, \u00a0Audrey Gadzekpo has called on political parties to adopt the affirmative action bill to help encourage more women to participate in the governance process.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”XzHE0O6cCnPPRwmpvXzqeJtmQh4KabWV”]She explained that political parties should educate their members to embrace the content of the bill to avoid any resistance.<\/p>\n
The affirmative action policy seeks to create more room for women to actively participate in politics.<\/p>\n
It will also require all sectors to reserve a percentage of their employment for women.<\/p>\n
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) was forced to reverse a decision to implement some parts of the bill, which sought to reserve some 16 parliamentary seats for women following fierce resistance, by its supporters<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n In an interview with Citi News<\/strong> on the sidelines of a lecture on Gender equality in Accra, Prof. Audrey Gadzekpo insisted that political parties should embrace the affirmative action bill.<\/p>\n \u201cIf all of them were doing what they promised to do in 2009 at the IEA event where all of the said that we are going to ensure that 30% of our party structures are infused with women, then the NPP wouldn\u2019t have felt as threatened as they did.\u201d<\/p>\n She argued that the NPP \u201cdidn\u2019t just pull this affirmative action out of the air, it is something that everybody agreed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Prof. Gadzekpo however chastised the NPP for not consulting widely before implementing the affirmative policy which was rejected by its members.<\/p>\n \u201cWe must learn from the NPP example that when you want to bring about fundamental change in society, it doesn\u2019t come easy and a lot of ground softening has to go on, and perhaps the NPP didn\u2019t do enough preparatory work to prepare peoples mind to accept it and to convince people who matter that it ultimately going to be a good thing for their party,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n