Mr Haruna Iddrisu, Minister of Communication, on Thursday called on stakeholders to develop policies and strategies to ensure that women are integrated into employment sector at all levels of responsibility.

He made the call at the first-ever International ‘Girls in ICT Day’ in Accra.

The Day was set aside by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to expose young females to the many opportunities available in the Information Communication Technology (ICT).

Mr Haruna said, the celebration was to encourage and generate the interest of females to consider pursuing careers in ICT, right from the primary through to the tertiary level.

He pledged government's determination to ensure that ICT facilitated women’s empowerment and full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of economic endeavour, and in all decision-making processes.

“To this end, the Ministry is pursuing relevant policies and programmes to provide skills to enable equal participation in the information society, improve access to information for economic empowerment, healthcare, among other things,” he said.

Available statistics at the Ministry, showed that 50 per cent of employees in the ICT sector were women, engaged especially in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Industry, in Data Processing and Call Centre Companies.

Madam Eva Lokko, an ICT Consultant, said school curriculum should be revamped to include more practical ICT modules to enable young women to be well equipped to contribute to socio-economic development in the society.

She encouraged young women to debunk the notion that they did not have the capabilities and intelligence to excel in their endeavours because they were trained from childhood to undertake household chores while men played in the open.

Madam Lokko said caring, nurturing and attention to detail made women perfect ICT users, ICT designers, engineers, software developers and ICT analysts.

She noted that, the limited number of girls in ICT was an anomaly and must be corrected in order to get more of them involved in ICT.

Madam Sarata Omane, Business Liaison Officer of Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, said ICT is had tools to transform the manner women lived, and yet, it was still a challenge for most women to access ICT infrastructure.

She noted that subsidising fees for women, engaging in workshops, stability in the ICT labour market, education, changing attitudes and practices could encourage young women to get involved in ICT in Ghana.

Madam Omane said, gender stereotyped division of labour at workplaces should be debunked and infrastructure should be women friendly to enable young women work comfortably at work.

On the eve of the Day, field trips by girls and young women of school going age were taken to ICT areas in Accra such as Busy Internet, Vodafone, RLG, Ministry of Defence, Joy FM, Viasat 1, E-toys, TV3, Ghana Telecom University, Tigo and Daily Guide.

These excursions are expected to expose them to ICT careers they can explore and aim at in the future.**