Why Empower Only Women

During my Christmas holidays I have been able to have some great conversations with Ghanaians about the future of their country and the issues that they feel need to be addressed in order for their country to continue developing. On my travels I met a  Canadian volunteer working with a women’s group whose efforts are focused on providing support for teen girls who are victims of sexual assault and teen pregnancy, something I am not familiar with in Ghana. I was assured that teenage pregnancy occurs more frequently than I am aware. Despite abortion being legal in Ghana, illegal abortions remain very common in rural areas which has disastrous effects on the physical and mental health of the affected women. Ghana is fortunately not a hotbed of HIV however the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Ghana is accepted to be higher than reported figures. 

Generally, young people in Ghana receive little to no sexual health education (from what I have been told), opening the door for NGO groups to intervene and offer education programs to try to stem the prevalence of disease and pregnancy. I spent a few days at Kokrobite beach near Accra, a place is very popular with volunteers and the locals. My boyfriend and I befriended one of the young men selling artwork on the beach. After telling him what I am doing in Ghana, he said the community living in Kokrobite was in need of workshops to teach women about contraceptives and to empower women to take charge of their bodies. He said that women were keen to learn about how to protect themselves and that previous workshops in the area were well received. I found it refreshing how adamant he was about women being empowered and the vital role that plays in reducing transmission of disease. He said that on public holidays when people flock to the beaches, organizations sometimes distribute condoms to people in an effort to reduce disease transmission and reduce unwanted pregnancies. For the sake of interest, my travel friend and I have kept an eye out to see how easy it is to find condoms for sale. Condoms are substantially more expensive than in Canada and the U.S., and more difficult to find than I was expecting it to be. We have only been able to find them in formal shops and at the Mall. It would be great if they were more accessible to people and more affordable to people who might not have much money to spend on condoms or other methods of contraception. Perhaps combined with increased education, accessibility and affordability would lead to more frequent condom use.

I do think that education efforts shouldn’t be exclusively focused on women. There seems to be such a responsibility placed on women to manage reproductive issues with little responsibility placed on men. Empowering men to protect themselves and their partners should be part of sexual health education because men are equally as responsible for protecting themselves as women. The culture here doesn’t promote gender equality and men are the heads of the household making it more important that men are educated and empowered to use protection. Education programs through schools is difficult because of the number of children who do not continue attending school after completing primary education. The other glaring barrier to improving sexual health in Ghana is the fear and shame-style campaigns for HIV claiming that there is no life after being diagnosed with HIV. It is unfortunate that this is the nature of the campaign but it doesn’t surprise me.

Living in Ghana makes me appreciate gender equality in Canada and the fact that women are empowered to make decisions for themselves. It is obvious that interactions between men and women here are a little different. I also think that NGOs that focus on improving sexual health education and women’s empowerment is critically important to help families overcome the cycle of poverty. In an ideal world, condoms would be easily accessible and inexpensive, reducing some of the barriers to encourage their use. Hopefully in the future this will happen.