Ghana passes Affirmative Action Bill after decades of advocacy

On July 30, 2024, Ghana’s members of parliament voted unanimously to pass the Affirmative Action Gender Equity Bill. Efforts to bolster women’s participation in governance began in 1960 with the passing of the Representation of the People Act which permitted 10 women to join the National Assembly. Ghana’s 1992 Constitution establishes that all Ghanaians are equal under the law, prohibits gender-based discrimination and requires efforts to “achieve reasonable regional and gender balance in recruitment and appointment to public offices.”  

Despite some legislative efforts to reduce discrimination and better include women in public life, the Global Pluralism Monitor: Ghana report shows that inequalities persist. Women have been consistently under-represented in parliament, occupying only 14.5% of seats in the National Assembly after the 2020 elections. Regional disparities in Ghana mean that women in the North face more economic hardship and lack access to adequate education and health resources compared to Southern women. Few women occupy corporate leadership roles, and women face difficulty accessing family planning and contraception.   

The Affirmative Action Bill aims to redress inequalities women have faced in politics, the private sector, education and health. It includes provisions to work towards gender parity in parliament and in key decision-making positions in the private sector by 2030. It also requires the Ministry of Education to improve women and girls’ access to education and the inclusion of gender equality subjects in curricula, offer girls scholarships, and address cultural norms that keep parents from sending girls to school. The Bill also includes measures to improve reproductive health education for girls and reduce child marriage and teenage pregnancies.  

The Affirmative Action Bill was first introduced in Parliament in 2011 and many groups have worked together to support its passing since then. The Affirmative Action Bill Coalition, hosted by ABANTU for Development, is a group of civil society organizations who worked together with parliamentarians and the media to advocate for the passing of the Bill and were instrumental in its success. Through a partnership with one of the Coalition members, the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), the Global Centre for Pluralism had the opportunity to meet with key stakeholders in Ghana throughout 2023. In these meetings the Centre and CDD-Ghana used the Global Pluralism Monitor: Ghana report as added evidence of the sources and impact of gender inequality across regional, rural-urban, ethnic and religious lines. Affirmative Action Coalition members raised the profile of these forms of exclusion to highlight the inequalities the Bill could address and demonstrate that it could benefit not just women but all Ghanaians.

The reaction of Ghanaians to the passing of the Affirmative Action Bill has overall been positive, especially among young women. ABANTU and CDD-Ghana expressed gratitude to the civil society organizations and members of parliament who championed the bill over the years and have already started looking ahead to supporting the implementation of the bill. The Global Centre for Pluralism looks forward to continuing to collaborate with our partners in  to promote fulsome implementation of the Bill.