Koforidua, Oct. 22 GNA - Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, Eastern Regional Minister, has stressed the need for increased educational opportunities for women to enable them overcome the many challenges they face in respect to their roles in public office.

He noted that educational pursuit would also help empower women economically, since their weak financial base discourages them to take up public leadership roles.

Mr Ofosu-Ampofo was presenting a paper on the topic: "Women-mainstay of National Elections," at a workshop organised in Koforidua on Friday for the Women's Wing of the National Democratic Congress, drawn from the Eastern, Greater Accra, Volta, Central and Western regions.

The workshop on the theme: "Women Participation in Local Governance" was organised jointly by the Netherlands Institute for Multi- Party Democracy and the Institute of Economic Affairs. Mr Ofosu-Ampofo observed that even though most countries are making frantic efforts to include women in decision-making, especially at the cabinet level, which is the highest decision making body, their participation is still disproportionately low. "Despite the affirmative and conscious efforts by government to nominate women to high public offices, the impact created has been rather minimal and as a result, women participation in decision making is still relatively low."

He indicated that the time had come to reverse the erroneous perception that women are a weaker sex and should be assigned to ministries considered as "soft".

Mr Ofosu-Ampofo said the establishment of the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs was an indication that "we are gradually eliminating discrimination of women though we still need to improve upon gender equality."

"A brief comparison of the 2004 and 2008 elections shows that the 10.8 per cent of the seats won by women in Parliament in 2004 was reduced to 8.26 per cent in 2008 as only 19 female members won their seats."

He called for a quota representation to be introduced in the body politics in order to bridge the wide gap between men and women representation in the political landscape.

Mr Ofosu-Ampofo identified finance, negative gender ideology, custom and other cultural practices as some of the major challenges facing women who would like to venture into politics.

He said even though women constitute more than 50 per cent of the total population of Ghana, Parliament has only 19 females out of the 230 members, which constitutes a meagre 8.26 per cent.

"At the Regional and District level, the participation of women in decision making is not anything different as we have only one female Regional Minister out of 10 and 12 chief executives of the 230 Metropolitan/Municipal/District chief executives."

"In the Eastern Region, the ratio of female Chief Executive to the male counterpart is 1:20 with the only female Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) at the Birim Central- Ms Ophelia Koomson and wondered why that should be the case.