For much of her life, Gladys Asetum understood what it meant for a woman to struggle to be heard.
Growing up, she watched her mother struggle to have a voice in decisions within their household. The experience shaped how the 35-year-old dressmaker saw herself and, for a time, weakened her confidence and ambitions.
But that outlook has gradually begun to change.
Years of engagement with organisations and participation in training programmes have helped Ms Asetum reconsider what women can contribute to their families and communities, and, importantly, what she herself is capable of doing.
“Training such as these have helped me understand that we women also have a voice and can speak freely. And I am building my life around it,” she said.
That growing confidence has brought her to a point she might once have considered beyond her reach. She is thinking about putting herself forward for public office.
“I am even thinking next Assembly Election, I will contest,” she said with a smile.
For Ms Asetum, leadership is no longer something reserved for other people.
It is a possibility.
Her journey reflects a much wider conversation taking place in parts of the Upper East Region about who gets to speak, who gets to make decisions and how the balance of power within households can shape women’s opportunities to become leaders beyond them.
It is a conversation that the Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana (YHFG) is trying to deepen through an intervention aimed at challenging attitudes and practices that limit women’s participation in leadership and decision-making.
From the household to public leadership
The challenge extends far beyond Ms Asetum’s experience.
Data from the Ghana Statistical Service and the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey show that the proportion of married women who solely make decisions about their own healthcare increased from 25 per cent in 2008 to 27.4 per cent in 2014 and 38.2 per cent in 2022, indicating progress but also showing the continuing gap in women’s autonomy within households.
At the community and political level, women remain significantly underrepresented, accounting for only about 4.1 per cent of district-level Assembly Members in July 2024 data.
The Affirmative Action (Gender Equity) Act, 2024, meanwhile, seeks to increase women’s representation in decision-making to at least 30 per cent by 2026 and 50 per cent by 2030.
But achieving greater representation in public life may require confronting inequalities much earlier, within families and communities.
That is where the experience of Lambert Kuzigiyem becomes significant.
For the 42-year-old Assembly Member for the Gwenia Electoral Area in the Chiana-Paga Constituency, leadership did not begin in the Assembly chamber.
It started much earlier, within his family, where decisions about his future were made with the understanding that education could alter the course of his life.
His family’s insistence that he pursue formal education eventually paid off. Today, he is educated, employed and serves his community as an Assembly Member.
But reflecting on that journey has also made him consider the influence women can have when they are able to participate meaningfully in family decisions.
“Had it not been for my mother, I would not be who I am today. She forced me to go to school and made sure I never lacked anything despite the difficulties she was facing at the time,” he said.
Mr Kuzigiyem believes women must be given a stronger voice in family decisions and greater opportunities to assume leadership roles in their communities.
For him, women’s leadership is not simply about occupying public positions.
It begins at home.
He says families must create an environment where women and girls can express their views, contribute to decisions and develop the confidence needed to take up leadership responsibilities beyond the household.
Changing the conversation
It is this connection between power in the household and participation in public life that YHFG is seeking to address.
Under its project, Advancing Young Women’s Leadership, Economic Power and Freedom from Violence, YHFG is engaging 30 traditional and religious leaders from six communities in the Kassena-Nankana West and Nabdam districts of the Upper East Region.
The initiative, supported by Plan International Ghana and Global Affairs Canada (GAC), seeks to strengthen the commitment of influential community leaders to promoting women’s inclusion in leadership and decision-making.
Project Lead Abigail Adumolga Tiwol says the engagement is intended to create an opportunity for traditional and religious leaders to critically examine the factors shaping women’s participation.
“The engagement will bring together 30 traditional and religious leaders from the project communities for an interactive dialogue on women’s participation in leadership and decision-making,” she said.
According to her, the discussions are focusing on women’s current participation in household and community decision-making, the social and cultural norms that limit their participation, and the influence traditional and religious leaders can exert in promoting positive social change.
Participants are also being encouraged to examine the benefits of inclusive decision-making to families and communities and identify practical actions they can take to support women and girls who aspire to leadership.
The focus on traditional and religious leaders is deliberate. They wield considerable influence over community values, social norms and expectations, meaning their influence can either reinforce existing barriers or help dismantle them.
More than a seat at the table
For women such as Grace Abatundra, a 35-year-old mother of three, the significance of such interventions extends beyond occupying formal leadership positions.
She says the training would strengthen her ability to build a more resilient and inclusive household, particularly by ensuring that decision-making involves her husband and children.
Her perspective underscores another dimension of the initiative: women’s inclusion in leadership is not only about elections, public office or formal community positions.
It also concerns who has a voice in the everyday decisions that shape families.
For YHFG, the ultimate measure of the intervention will therefore not be the number of traditional and religious leaders who attend the engagement, but whether the discussions translate into changes in attitudes and practices.
Mrs Tiwol says the project expects participants to develop a stronger understanding of the importance and benefits of women’s inclusion in leadership and decision-making.
It also hopes to increase awareness of the social and cultural barriers affecting women’s participation, strengthen the commitment of traditional and religious leaders to support women and girls into leadership, and identify practical community-level actions to promote inclusive decision-making.
From watching her mother to imagining herself
For Ms Asetum, however, those broad ambitions are already taking on a deeply personal meaning.
As a girl, she watched her mother struggle to find space for her voice within their household. The experience once helped shape her own uncertainty about what women could do and where they could lead.
Now, at 35, she is beginning to imagine a different path for herself.
The woman who once questioned her own confidence is considering asking an entire electoral area to place its confidence in her.
“I am even thinking next Assembly Election, I will contest,” she said.
Whether Ms Asetum eventually makes that decision remains to be seen. But even contemplating it represents a significant shift from the woman she says she once was.
And perhaps that is where the larger change YHFG is pursuing begins: not necessarily at the ballot box or in an Assembly chamber, but in homes where women are heard, in communities where girls learn that their opinions matter, and in women like Ms Asetum beginning to see leadership not as something reserved for others, but as a possibility for themselves.
A1 Radio | 101.1 MHz | Moses Apiah | Bolgatanga
