Abstract

This study explores Ghanaian women’s perception and voices about issues of gender equality in terms of exercising their political and decision-making rights in connection with political participation and governance in Ghana. The study uses demographic survey and six different focus group discussions to capture the views of a total of 68 women with different educational, socioeconomical, and occupational backgrounds, in two regions of the Ghana. The findings indicate that even though theoretically the constitution of Ghana gives women equal rights as their male counterparts to actively participate in the governance of their country, in practice, women face issues of gender-based power imbalance and discrimination in addition to other structural, institutional, cultural, and traditional barriers and roadblocks. These barriers expose women as being inferior and second-class citizens compared with their male counterparts in term of participation and inclusion in the governance of their country. The study discusses the social and policy implications of the issues of gender inequality and social exclusion of women in politics and calls for empowerment and organization of women and structural change in the system.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-1-2011

Notes/Citation Information

Published in SAGE Open, v. 1, issue 1, p. 1-9.

© The Author(s) 2011

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm).

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244011410715

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