It was in recognition of this unique role that the first President of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, proposed a policy of affirmative action, the Representation of the People's (Women Members) Bill, which was passed into an Act in 1960, to empower women to make local, regional and national decisions.
The Act enabled the appointment of ten women into the then National Assembly now Parliament). This became the springboard and a promising beginning for women's participation in political decision-making. However, the country's democratic experiment went through turbulent periods of coup d'etats-inspired regimes and short-lived civilian governments from 1966 to 1992.
Ghana's multi-party elections in 1992 engendered by the Constitution opened discussions on the important role women play in national political discourse, democratic governance in particular. Furthermore, the 1990s coincided with increased regional and international focus on the increasing role of women in politics and development.
Successive Ghanaian governments since 1992 supported the quest for increased participation of women in politics and governance, but little results were achieved. Despite the governments having signed, and ratified treaties and frameworks for increasing the active role of women in governance such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Beijing Platforms for Action, the Millennium Development Goals, the Commonwealth Plan for Action for Gender Equality, the African Union Commitment to Gender Equality, and the New Partnership for African's Development provisions on gender equality, much still needs to be done to improve the involvement of women in the decision-making process.
In spite of the little progress made in empowering women in critical political decision making, various past and present governments claim much success in this regards.
Indeed, Ghana's much-acclaimed progress in democracy has not proportionately reflected in the level of participation of women in politics and governance despite the consistent struggle of some gender-based organisations such as the African Women Development Network, NETRIGHT, ABANTU for Development, among others, to champion the cause of active participation by women in national decision making.
Men and Female Parliamentary Contestants
The state of affairs, as depicted in the tables above, may be attributed to the fact that governments' commitments to women's participation in governance has not been effectively translated into strategy, policy, legislation and action in Ghana to benefit women. Women must be adequately empowered to influence decision making in order to attain holistic sustainable national developments.
The case for critically analysing this state of affairs has become more compelling with the retrogression in the number of women parliamentarians in the 2008 elections. It is obvious that, until special measures are initiated, the level of participation of women in governance and politics will remain largely unchanged and probably deteriorated with time.
However, the participation of women in politics and governance will only improve if government and relevant state and civil society organisations commit themselves to the formulation and implementation of affirmative action strategies to level the unfair playing field on which men and women play political football.
In a multi-party democracy such as Ghana's, political parties exert a huge influence on affirmative action programmes. So party leaders must encourage women to actively take part in inter- and intra-party decision making which would go a long way to determine national decisions and policies.
The parties should encourage and assist women to compete to be elected into Parliament to not only represent their constituencies but also partake in national decision making. It is laudable that some parties recently reduced filing fees for women who want to contest as presidential candidates and parliamentary aspirants as well as party executives.
Since Parliament is a key organ within the system of politics and governance in Ghana, and a major vehicle to gain access to political influence, the current 19 female Parliamentarians is a lopsided representation, given that the 2000 Population and Housing census and the interim 2010 census revealed that women make up over 51 per cent of Ghana's total population.