Journalists urged to support women in elections

Tamale (N/R), Dec. 15, GNA - Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA), a Non Governmental Organisation, involved in the development of rural communities in the Northern Region, on Wednesday held a day's workshop for journalists to solicit their support towards increasing women's representation in politics.

The workshop, which forms part of a three-year project sponsored by the European Union, was aimed at supporting women contenders in the forthcoming district assembly elections to emerge winners. Within the three-year period, similar workshops and capacity building events will be organised for women politicians to encourage them to participate and eventually increase their representation in Parliament and other national decision making levels.

Since 1998, the participation as well as representation of women in district assembly elections in the country, has been on the decline, a situation the GDCA said was not healthy for democratic development of the country because women formed the majority of the country's population. The GDCA is therefore, piloting the project in six local authority areas in the Region namely the Tamale Metropolitan, Nanumba North, Nanumba South, Saboba, Central Gonja and Yendi districts where some women contenders were invited to participate in the workshop.

Mrs Rosemond Kumah, Programmes Advocacy and Communications Officer of GDCA, who opened the workshop, charged journalists to do their best to support and promote women candidates to win the elections. Mrs Kumah said development would not be complete if any gender group was left behind in the decision making process and called on the media to disabuse the minds of the electorate that women were incapable of managing leadership positions.

She called on women to be vocal in their communities, saying "the days we were made to remain quite are over". She called on men and husbands of women contenders to support their wives in their political endeavors. Mrs Ayomu Bakari Seidu, an assembly candidate for Tuluwe Electoral Area in the Yapei/Kusugu Constituency, said with the support of the media, she would be better placed to win the election. She said women faced a lot of challenges in their campaigns and mentioned some of them to include the difficulty in resource mobilization and socio-cultural and religious beliefs that were sometimes used negatively by their male counterparts against them and called on the media to help to reverse the trend. Members of the media, who attended the workshop, pledged their support towards the cause of women politicians, but called on such women to be supportive of each other and not be their own enemies. This year's District Assembly election is slated for December 28.