WHY FEW GHANAIAN WOMEN GO GLOBAL

Author: Glory J. Boateng

8th March, 2020 was dedicated to celebrating women globally. This year’s celebration had the theme being aligned with UN Women’s new campaign, "Generation Equality." In Africa and especially Ghana, it was not much of a hullabaloo as the day fortunately or unfortunately fell on a Sunday - a reserved religious day and resting day for others.

But as a Global citizen, I got myself thinking about why there aren’t a lot of Global Women coming from this side of the continent, Ghana

. I took my phone and began to surf for global Ghanaian Women. And sadly, I couldn’t find a lot, not to even calculate the percentage of my findings.

But I’d still use this opportunity to commend women making global impacts like, Lucy Quist, Ghana’s first Female CEO of a telco, former Airtel and former vice chair of Fifa’s normalization committee.

Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei, who is UN International Elections Commissioner, and Ghana’s first Female and Former Electoral Commissioner. You might be wondering why I mentioned just these two. These are some of the two people whose position affected decision making at the global level.

Challote Osei

I would also want to appreciate extraordinary women like Gloria Akuffo, who is Ghana’s current Attorney General and Minister for Justice. She led the team of lawyers at the International Tribunal for the law of the Sea ITLOS in hamburg, Germany to uphold Ghana’s Position on the maritime boundary dispute between Ghana and Cote d’ivoire. Which Ghana eventally won.

I am also sure there are other women making global impacts. But my question is, how many are they?

And why are we not able to go Global easily?

I'm scared it would only continue to get worst if something radically good and progressive doesn’t happen. Can we talk about some of the women who dare to climb global or better still make global changes go through as they start in Ghana.

Initially, the most popular factor or reason was our culture, which tend to favor men the more. Our joy was that education or literacy could half way solve this. Unfortunately these beliefs creeped into the mindset of both men and even majority of our women. One of the popular sayings were “women are their own enemies”.

Religiously, statement like “women are the weaker vessels” were taken to even the board room. Hence, positions like secretary were given to women at the boardroom meeting. Some of them even brought the scripture in the Bible, “women submit to your husbands” to the work place, even when the women there were their colleagues or even bosses. Some men claim for submission at our offices even when they are not our husbands. Obviously abusing the Good Word of God.

When a woman makes a contribution, she’s termed emotional.

Some say we should focus more on our bodies. No wonder we have more women even pursuing makeup artististry after their first degree.

I have practically met too many men at the work place who always doubt my competence. Some of them can even accuse you of sleeping with the boss, when you’re promoted.

In our culture and systems, it is believed that all the woman can do is follow and not lead. So just a few women hold management positions in some of Ghana’s leading companies.

The issue of marriage is another reason why some women don’t even want to fight to get to the global map of influence. I remember my lovely uncle advicing me to hide my portfolio from men so that I can get them to propose to me. As funny as that may sound, it is the reality on the ground. Ambitious women sometimes have to compromise with their dreams so that they can be easily noticed as quite, calm and reserved by a potential partner.

Well, in the coming years, I hope to see more women from Ghana being globally celebrated. And oh, I will be one!..