ACPSP: Gender Equality Network

Parliamentary Centre Delivers Gender Sensitivity Training for Ghana Parliamentary Staff via Video Conference
16 November – 16 December 2004

Background

Parliamentary Center ’s previous collaboration with the World Bank Institute on a project to strengthen the capacity of the Ghana Parliamentary committees to effectively execute their oversight role, culminated in identification of training for parliamentary staff as one of the priority areas. The project evaluation revealed the weakness in gender mainstreaming and hence a Gender Sensitivity training program was deemed appropriate. The decision on timing of Parliamentary staff training was based on prudence of taking advantage of their reduced work load while parliamentarians were engaged in the election campaign.

Course Objectives were:

• To contribute to better understanding amongst Ghana parliamentary staff of the meaning and significance of gender equity priorities in the development process;

• To improve the abilities of parliamentary staff to meet their responsibilities in research, support to committees, and outreach to community-based civil society groups so as to contribute to achieving gender equity priorities;

• To improve the functioning of parliamentary institutions and their role in representation and oversight in Ghanaian governance.

Course Delivery and Methodology

The course comprising of ten modules was delivered over a period of four weeks from 16 November to 16 December 2004. As a time and cost saving mechanism, the course delivery was conducted via video conferencing which involved three main sites ( Washington, Ottawa and Accra) with the exception of one session which linked up four sites, due to one consultant being based in Dakar, Senegal. The course delivery execution involved five members of Parliamentary Centre staff, three based in Ghana, one in Senegal and one in Canada.

As a strategy for encouraging concentration, the two hour sessions were delivered in PowerPoint form, but with intermittent appearance of a presenter and slides. After 15 – 20 minutes of presentation, the consultant would pause to allow time for discussion. All sessions concluded with a summary.

Course Content

The course commenced with an introductory session which outlined the course content, but also focused on the definition of gender, by particularly drawing a distinction between gender, which is a social construct and biological differences. As a social construct, gender is created, nurtured and perpetuated by culture, religion laws and administrative practices as opposed to biological differences between men and women, which are given. The session identified some of the topical gender issues with a view to highlighting cost-benefit analysis as a tool for changing pre-conceived ideas and stereotypes about gender differences. Parliamentarians, civil servants and the media were identified as some of the major change agents for achieving gender equality.

The subsequent three sessions discussed participation in decision-making and poverty among women as some of the topical issues on gender and were complemented by a session on gender budgeting as a tool for analysis of gender equality in development programs. The identified role of parliamentarians was linked to the support role of parliamentary staff in terms of research and storage of information in an easily accessible format. The research function went further to emphasize the crucial role of civil society as a source of information necessary for parliamentary staff’s responsibilities.

Since the theme of Gender based poverty seem to have dominated most of the sessions, discussion of Micro Finance as a strategy for poverty reduction seemed a logical step to take. The micro finance discussion was also timely since 2005 has been designated the year of Micro credit and the theme is already taking centre stage in the Ghanaian Parliament. The global approach to poverty reduction through micro credit was also linked to a growing global interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and an analysis of gender dimensions in CSR, which concluded the training program.