What is the Affirmative Action Bill?

One of the issues that filled the airwaves in Ghana on International Women’s Day was the Affirmation Action Bill. Though some sensitization has been done to make women and even men aware of the bill and its content, some people are still blank on the subject.

Here is a summary of what Affirmative action is and what its content will help us achieve as Ghanaians when it is passed into law.

Affirmation action policies are created worldwide to ensure fair admission practices and correct the long periods of racial discrimination amongst marginal groups; In Ghana’s case, women.

The Affirmation Action law will ensure women’s equal participation in politics and all fields of work. It will also ensure women’s equal representation and participation in governance, positions of power and decision making processes throughout the society when the bill is made law.

The action will also check practices or acts that harm women and children in various ways. I.e. child marriages, FGM, witch-camps, extreme widowhood rites, abuse against women and children, etc.

Think – thanks, political parties, religious bodies, institutions and policy makers and other well meaning bodies have contributed to the bill. Ghana now waits for the bill to be passed into law.