Koforidua, Oct. 17, GNA - The Eastern Regional Director of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), Mr Emmanuel Quaye-Sowah, has charged women to support their fellow women occupying high public positions to enable them to bring honour and image to women. He noted that "women themselves had been their own downfalls", adding, "many a times, it is the same women whose colleague women were fighting to be included in the decision-making crew, who discourage them with derogatory remarks".

Mr Quaye-Sowah, who made the call at the launching of the Women's Manifesto in the Eastern Region at Koforidua on Friday, said in order to achieve equity for women, all women, irrespective of their background, must be involved in the advocacy role.

The Greater Accra Regional Manager of Presbyterian Schools, Ms Beatrice Bernice Boateng, who chaired the function, said it was not the occupation of higher positions that showed equity for women, but the ability to perform any role assigned to them either by gender or sex. She called on women to aspire to acquire knowledge to be able to compete with their male counterparts and stressed on the education of the girl-child in realizing the goals of the manifesto.

"In order to achieve the goals of this manifesto, we have to be responsible for the progress of our own lives and to redefine our understanding of marriage, that, it is to compliment each other and not to rely on one", she emphasized".

In launching the seventy-page manifesto, the Deputy Commissioner of the NCCE, Mrs Augustina Akosua Akumanyi encouraged women to read the document and endeavour to implement those that affected domestic issues. She cited for instance, the part of the document that stresses on the upbringing of children, such as leaving the cooking for girls only because they were considered to be the responsibility of girls, saying this could be given practical meaning if women would re-orient their minds on that.

Mrs Akumanyin indicated that out of the 110 District Chief Executives, only six are women, out of the 40 foreign missions, only 9 women were heads and out of the 200 parliamentarians only 16 are women, saying "this statistics alone shows that women have been sidelined for far too long".