Budgets must address concerns of women-WiLDAF Ghana

Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF-Ghana) have called on government to formulate budget that addresses concerns of women in Ghana.

Mr. Frank Wilson Bodza, WiLDAF-Ghana, Programmes Manager for Governance, said during a Gender Budget training organised for selected GROW partners in Ho. According to him, many budgets of government fail to address concerns of women even though population of women in most countries is higher than that of men (50.5% in Ghana).

Making the call at the training, Mr. Bodza acknowledged that, women play key role in the development and transforming of our economy though economic development affects them more negatively than men.

He explained that, vast majority of rural farmers especially women still face enormous challenges in accessing productive resources to boost their farming activities.

It has even become more difficult to gauge through the policies and agricultural budgets of governments to find out exactly what they are doing to resolve this injustice.

The training forms part of the GROW Campaign activities funded by Oxfam in Ghana to enhance knowledge of partners-Coalition of Civil Society on Land (CICOL), SEND-GHANA, Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG), Friends of the Nation (FON) and Africa Centre for Energy policy (ACEP), on gender budgeting, analysis and tools for monitoring local and national budget.

It was also meant to strengthen capabilities of partners to apply gender budget tools and mechanisms to agriculture and food security advocacy in Ghana.

Mr. Bodza believes that, budgets offer a possibility for transforming and redressing existing gender inequities and hence achieving the gender equality goal.

On his part, Mr. Vitus Azeem who facilitated the training explained that, budgets are the place where policies and programs are defined and translated into resource allocations. 

“It is the most important policy of government because, without money, government cannot implement any other policy successfully.”

Making a presentation at the training, Madam Nana Aisha Mohammed, a Project Officer at SEND-GHANA encouraged participants to apply the lessons learnt in order to be able advocate for resources for women especially those operating in the Agriculture sector.

A budget can only be said to be gender sensitive when it has integrated fully the concerns and experiences of women and men in the design of its policies and programmes and recognizes their differential impacts on different social groups, she added.