International Women’s Day Celebration-Reflections by the Queen Mothers’ Platform

On Tuesday, 8th March 2022, the National Executive Council of the Queen Mothers’ Platform joined other stakeholders in Ghana to celebrate International Women’s Day, a day set aside by the UN to remember the fight for gender equality and to create awareness of the barriers women face in all spheres of life.

This year’s celebration was under the campaign theme “#BreakTheBias” and several events were organized by different institutions to commemorate that day. The week of celebration and events has passed. We are back to normal. The normal where women still experience biases and attempt to break the biases is met with varied reactions and responses. Queen Mothers in Ghana are traditional leaders, duly enstooled, installed, or enskinned in line with the custom of their respective traditional areas and gazetted, as required by national legislation.  The office of the Queen Mother is therefore a very high, distinguished office. One would therefore expect that Queen Mothers will be in the position to easily lift other women who face biases or easily win the fight of breaking the biases.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. Queen Mothers in Ghana face similar biases that all women in Ghana also experience. In the case of Queen Mothers, the biases could even be worse because they are considered custodians of tradition and culture. Any attempt to pursue a course different from what the long-held tradition and culture dictate or modify the customary practices to suit the modern society could be considered as an attempt to work against the very identity of the society.

Through the Queen Mothers’ Platform-Ghana, Queen Mothers are leading the processing of empowering Queen Mothers in Ghana to deal with the biases they face at different levels of traditional leadership and position them to support other women to also deal with the biases they face. There is no doubt that “#BreakTheBias” is a lifelong commitment for women in Ghana.

The Queen Mothers’ Platform-Ghana is committed to this agenda not only for a day but a lifetime. We hope our partners will continue working with us to win! Let us all work together to break the biases not only in words but in action.