Some scores of students at the University of Ghana have described the newly launched University Gender Policy as discriminatory to males.
This comes after the University of Ghana launched the University of Ghana Gender Policy at the Great Hall of the University on 14th March 2023. The University of Ghana Gender Policy is aimed at promoting measures to achieve gender equality at all levels within the University, promote measures to achieve balance in the ratio of male to female employees and students at all levels within the University. It also seeks to empower units to identify and develop innovative gender balance plans as well as provide an avenue for redress when there is non-compliance with the policy.
Interacting with UniversNews, some students claimed that the policy is only centered on female empowerment and advocacy to the disadvantage of men. According to them, little attention is given to men compared to the women in the gender policy, which is in contrast to the idea of gender equality.
“It’s a nice initiative but on the other hand I feel the policy itself is discriminatory to males because all that they were saying were mostly centered around or about women, and few things about men. If it is gender policy and it’s about gender equality then it should be both centered on men and women,” one student said.
“The gender policy is a good initiative to protect the right especially of genders but my issue now is its female based from my observation. Although gender comprises of both men and female, so I think it will be best if the policy is created to put in the views of both males and females. But in this scenario, you could see that the female aspect was more elaborated as compare to the male,” another student lamented.
“With the university bringing up this policy is actually not a bad idea because it’s for women empowerment which is the underling thing but I think that it was center too much on women.”
Meanwhile, the University of Ghana Vice Chancellor Prof. Nana Aba Appiah Amfo indicated at the Gender Policy Launch that the university believes in creating equal opportunities for members of the community. According to her, the University holds no form of discrimination in competency on the basis of gender.
“As an institution committed to the realization of Sustainable Development Goal 5 which focuses on gender equality and guided by the constitution of the republic of Ghana, we generally excused any form of discrimination on grounds of gender. The University Community believes in creating rooms for competent individuals irrespective of gender, tribe and work environment. As testament to this and for the first time in the history of the university, we have an all-female set of principal officers who are women of substance and value, who bring so much knowledge and resourcefulness into their position.”
