The Founder and Convener of the Alliance for Women in Media Africa (AWMA), a non-profit organization, Shamima Muslim has urged journalists to increase visibility on marginalized groups particularly marginalized groups including women and persons with disabilities.
She said that was because these persons had over the years been sidelined to a large extent in politics and governance.
Hence the Founder and Convener of the AWMA in Accra on Thursday urged the media to “increase visibility on local government issues…So we are calling on the media please let us increase visibility on inclusion issues, women, youth, and disabled communities.
Meanwhile, the former Director of the Institute of Local Government Studies and Chairperson of Star Ghana, Dr Esther Ofei-Aboagye has also underscored the need for increased female representation in the forthcoming district-level elections scheduled for December 19, 2023.
“Women should be at the forefront of making decisions about what assemblies engage in. If assemblies are by the constitution look after the wholistic development of localities for the betterment of people who live there, then it is a platform on which women should predominate.”
“However the figures that we’ve been treated to show that women constitute a minority in there. For instance, the election of assembly women has fallen, in the last election it fell below five percent of communities, and again the appointing mechanism has not reached the height that we aspire to,” Dr Ofei-Aboagye stated.