WiLDAF is a pan-African network of organisations and individuals committed to the protection and promotion of women’s rights since 1991. Head quartered in Harare, Zimbabwe but now working in 31 African countries, WiLDAF’s networking role...

‘We know Politics’
-Hearing Women’s Voices in Ghana’s 2008 General Elections

As the name suggests, this is a project initiated by WiLDAF Ghana to re-echo women’s concerns in the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in December 2008.

Even though women have showed an increased interest in contesting for elections (particularly parliamentary elections), since the beginning of the new democratic dispensation in 1992, only a few if not insignificant number of them have actually won elections into the parliament of the 4th republic. Only one (1) woman has been chosen as a vice presidential candidate by a political party in the past 16 years.

To address this gap, WiLDAF Ghana believes that this renewed interest needs to be nurtured and groomed through the provision of the right institutional framework. It also requires a sustained advocacy by civil society and women’s rights advocates and groups to shock/galvanize current political leaders into putting those mechanisms of participation in place to enable women to compete and win elections in a male dominant society such as Ghana.

WiLDAF Ghana intends to use strategies such as advocacy and lobbying, public education and awareness creation, capacity building and creating media visibility for female parliamentary contestants to see an increased number of women voted into parliament.

We expect to reach out to women across the 10 regions of the country and sensitize both the rural and urban woman to demand prioritization of women’s issues in the political manifestoes of the various political parties; and to use that as a bargaining chip for voting for any of them.