AFRICA: Women Urged to Break Male-Dominated Barriers

A regional workshop has been opened in Accra with a call on women to take up leadership challenges to break barriers for young women in Africa.

The acting Director of Baobab-Women's Learning Partnership (WLP), a non-governmental organisation, Ms. Chibogu Obinwa, made the call at the opening ceremony of the workshop for 25 participants from Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe on Tuesday.

The five-day workshop is on the theme: “Young women redefining and transforming the leadership agenda in Africa: A strategic approach towards sustainable democracy and development in the region”.

Ms. Obinwa said young women need to be empowered to reach their full potential in private and public life and not to be oppressed by gender stereotypes, adding that over the past years, the voices of women had been excluded in all aspects of development, particularly, at the community level and mainstream political spaces.

She said, “The marginalisation is not limited to one African country but cuts across all African countries on the continent,” and it was not different from the patriarchal system in most communities across the region, where men were perceived as dominant and women as subordinates.

Ms. Obinwa said, although women's ideas were often left unheard, fortunately, changes were slowly emerging as more people realised the significance of equal opportunities for men and women.

“In recognition of the role defective leadership had played in fostering these development hurdles, the WLP agenda commits to encourage a transformative model of leadership within the region,” she said.

Ms. Obinwa said the model would encourage young women to take up leadership challenges with the advantage of innovative technologies and media to mobilise support, build solidarity, information exchange networks, and initiate a formidable movement of new leaders that would ultimately transform the leadership agenda of the region.

The Executive Director of Women in Self Empowerment (WiSE), Ms. Adwoa Bame, urged the participants to be ready to take up the mantle of successful female leaders, adding that “success without a successor is failure”.