Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana, a not-for-profit organization based in the Upper East Region is advocating for the modification of some of the enshrined gender roles and norms that militate against the sound development of girls in the region.
“Talking about societal norms and beliefs, I know we really cherish this tradition, but it’s high time we look at the aspect of the tradition that is not helping us. We’re not saying that let’s throw away our tradition; no, we cannot do that.”
“But sometimes we cannot also blame our opinion leaders because this was what was handed over to them by their forefathers. It’s up to us to sit with our opinion leaders, let them understand that times are changing and since times are changing, how we can look at some of the gender norms, the gender believes, the roles that we assigned to the boy and the girl child, how can we equally distribute these roles equally within the society such that the girl and the boy child can all thrive at the same time.
I don’t think that parents will want their boys to be the ones emerging and becoming doctors, teachers, nurses in the future whilst their girls are left behind. Every parent will want to have both children doing well and so if we speak with our opinion leaders, let them understand that times are changing and so we need to modify some of our gender beliefs, our norms in the society that are harmful to the girl child.”
Celebrating International Day of the Girl Child, Priscilla Nyaaba asserted “coming to the Upper East Region I wouldn’t say we have done so badly even though more is yet to be done to improve the situation of our girls.”
The Youth Harvest Foundation Executive Director says that the region is disadvantaged because it is one of the poorest regions in Ghana. With this in mind most parents are unable to provide what their girls need.
“We as a region have political leaders, we have people who have power, we have people who have the money who could have at least come in to support our girls in terms of access to education.”
According to her, although girls enrolment in school at the rural communities is now encouraging, some of them are not able to further their education after Senior High School.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Osuman Kaapore Tahiru|Ghana
