Juaso (Ash), Sept 23, GNA - Women have been urged to stand solidly behind their fellow women who contest political positions. Dr Naana Opoku-Mensah, Country Director for the Hunger Project-Ghana, said this was necessary to achieve gender equality at all levels of decision-making. She asked them to reject the myth that certain positions are the preserve of men.

Dr Opoku-Mensah was speaking at a workshop on the Constitutional Review for selected women at Juaso in the Asante Akim South District. The workshop was to help whip up the enthusiasm of the participants in the Constitutional Review Process and to discuss changes that they would want to be made to the Constitution.

It was jointly funded by the Hunger Project-Ghana, Women in Law and Development in Africa (WIDAF), Gender Studies and Human Rights Documentation Centre and FIDA-Ghana.

Dr Opoku-Mensah said it was ironic that women, who formed the majority of Ghana's population, remained woefully under-represented at every level of decision-making. She spoke about the need for the government to create equal opportunities for both sexes to bridge the widening economic gap between men and women in the country.

She criticised what, she said, was the lip service by successive governments to the Affirmative Action Policy and called for the enactment of laws to implement it. Mr Martin Amoyaw, Eastern Regional Director of Legal Aid Board, encouraged women to take advantage of the constitutional review to make input to promote and protect their interests as well as those of children.