The Aya Institute for Women, Politics and Media has extended its warm greetings to Ghanaian women home and abroad on the occasion of International Women’s Day (IWD) 2025.
According to Aya, this year’s celebration, in particular, marks key milestones in Ghana’s journey toward gender equality.
“Ghana has successfully elected its first woman vice president, a symbolic feat that has further consolidated our democracy. Again, the Affirmative Action Bill was passed into law in the last quarter of 2024. The 2024 elections saw a slight increase in the number of women representatives elected. Additionally, this year’s IWD sees three decades since the Beijing Conference in 1995, where Ghana first participated as the first step of commitment towards gender equality. While we are still working towards parity, we must celebrate significant leaps that have been recorded within the gender space in Ghana,” a statement from the group said.
Under the theme “Accelerate Action”, the Aya Institute is calling for concrete steps to improve gender parity in two critical areas: political appointments and panel/speaker diversity.
The Institute highlighted the need for increased female representation in political appointments by the executive arm of government. Citing the 2024 World Bank Women, Business and Law Index, the group stressed that greater female participation in governance attracts vital investments and enhances economic growth.
“The report suggests that only if women have significant representation will we achieve legal equality of economic opportunity and unlock the benefits and economic improvements associated with this diversity. Not only is it economically beneficial, but by extension, a reflection of a country’s democratic development. According to the World Economic Forum, in its 2024 Global Gender Gap report, it states that, at the current rate of progress, it will take until 2158, which is roughly five generations from now, to reach full gender parity.”
The Aya Institute also called on Ghanaian media to be intentional about including female experts in discussions and ensuring balanced panel compositions.
“The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) 2020 reveals that Africa’s media operates with an overwhelming dominance of male speakers, drowning and overshadowing the expertise and voices of women. This underrepresentation is evident in the lack of gender diversity in the use of experts by the media, at conferences and other speaker opportunities and platforms. Panels constituted are especially non-gender sensitive on media platforms. In neighbouring Nigeria, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), women are also underrepresented in the media, both as leaders and as expert sources, making up only 20% of expert news sources.”
“According to the 2024 Ghana Women Experts Report, only 14% of experts in Ghanaian media are women, with some media houses recording as low as 3% female expert representation. The Ghanaian media, despite the genuine challenge of raising women speakers in major socio-economic programming, must be committed to gender diversity in panel selection.”
As the world marks International Women’s Day 2025, the Aya Institute urges all stakeholders to take decisive action toward achieving gender parity.
“In celebration of the International Women’s Day, let us keep working to achieve gender diversity in our society to ensure that our collective efforts would yield the best outcomes towards an equal and fairer society where women’s voices, talents and achievements are recognized, and made visible to make our democracy properly situated and functional,” the statement stressed.
