Ghanaian parliament asks women’s leaders to assist with gender budgeting

Summary of story from Ghana Business News, October 12, 2011

The Ghanaian parliament has asked the African Women Leaders Network (AWLN), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), to work on its gender budgeting.

It hopes to make gender budgeting – setting fiscal policy with female advancement  in mind – central to its decisions.

The main focus is on family planning, which is moving from being a health issue to a development issue in Ghana.

The role of family planning is a developmental tool to achieve, in the short term, a reduction in maternal and child mortality and, in the long term, realise the Millennium Development Goals.

The AWLN will collaborate with the Ghana Health Service and partner NGOs to organise a Family Planning Week. Its aim is to safeguard women’s health and improve female empowerment in African society.

Dr Akoto, a former government minister, said that the AWLN needed to create workshops to educate other members of parliament about how policy gender policy should work.

He called on the network to broaden the scope of members to include gender sensitive men, explaining that “the narrow definition of gender as feminist is a misconception, as there are more gender sensitive men advocates whose input would enhance the network’s campaign”.