Encouraging Gender Equity in Ghana's Disability Organizations

What are your main responsibilities with ADD?

My responsibilities are to incorporate gender into ADD's work with disabled people's organizations (DPOs). My first task is to sensitize ADD and disabled people's organizations to gender. We need to ensure fair and equitable access to whatever ADD has to provide. Second, I have to encourage disabled women that they can do more.

What does gender mean to you?

It means that there are different and distinct roles for men and women, but that all contribute, and that must be recognized. Everybody must be allowed to contribute to the development of their communities.

How are gender and disability related?

Gender and disability go hand in hand. For example, a disabled man may be seen as a weakling, or he may be called a woman. Because of his disability, he is feminized.

Disabled people are lumped together, considered vulnerable or disadvantaged. But disabled people are men and women. We realized it's important to champion this gender issue within the disability movement. We have to sensitize that they are men and women. It's their right and they must be able to enjoy that right. The disability movement is about equal rights. But it hasn't always incorporated gender concerns. Our message is simple: men and women have equal rights.

How do you teach about gender?

Gender analysis means looking at access, control, and benefit: who has access, who controls, and who benefits. But you can't just talk about those things directly. So we developed the "gender equality donkey" and the "gender analysis bicycle" to help show that it's not about women taking over from men but rather about recognizing the full contribution of each other. [Please see photo of Mariama holding an illustration of the gender analysis bicycle]

From next year we will be training with what we call "gender lenses." They are questions to ask yourselves in order to make sure that men and women are fairly represented in organizations or programs and their needs are taken into equal consideration. It's in the pipeline.

How did you get started working on gender with ADD?

We started 3 years ago incorporating gender into the program itself with DPOs and with ADD as an organization. When we started, we conducted a needs assessment of the DPOs. We found that women were not part of decision making. In seminars, women didn't speak. Men spoke for them. So next we met with the women. We let women themselves talk about their situation and what they wanted to do to change it. They came up with ideas. Well, they said, if we could get something to do, an income generating activity, and all that. So in trying to let them explain their situation, and discussing options, we were trying to link to the issue of gender.

Can you describe your ongoing work in northern Ghana?

When we go out for discussions with rural women, we'll meet the chief, we'll say we want to meet the group of people, we are welcomed, the women come out... or sometimes the women don't even come out actually. The men do. Then we have to stress that we want to meet the women. Then the men lead their women to come out. Now as they sit around, while the men are standing around trying to see what is happening, they will not express themselves. Whatever we ask them, they will say "Oh, no problem." Or they will keep saying, "Yes yes yes!" You won't get any information from them. And the men will stand around to be sure that, you know, you are not doing anything to destroy their peaceful kind of setting. And once they are sure that the information you have brought has nothing to do with destabilizing their system, then you are fine. After a while the men will leave, and then the discussion can start. And it's difficult. Tradition is very hard to get through. But I think, gradually, things are working.

Over the years, we have realized that women have been marginalized. And that we haven't had the opportunity to put up our best. So we ask: if you are in a situation where you have no job, kids, and a husband who is not supporting you, is there something that you can do, but have not been allowed to do? And they say "oh yeah! My husband won't let me do what I know how to do to earn money." So we say yes, gender is about letting your husband know that you have a role to play. And if allowed to play that role well, the benefit comes to the family. And it is your right.

The issue of rights is what is the big problem. Because you know, traditionally a woman really hasn't got rights. Especially in this part of the world. Mostly, if you go to the Upper East Region for example, the dowry system makes it virtually impossible for the woman to have any rights. Once you are dowried, the cows are paid and you are dowried, you are part of the man's assets. So who are you to stand up to the man, or who are you to decide what you want to do? And these are very negative and we try to let them understand how negative that is.

So we try to use their own circumstances to let them understand what gender is all about and try to change situations that they find themselves in. So that is what we do. We don't just go and stand talking about gender. We let them try to discuss their situation, their very lives, the way they are, and use that to bring in the issue of gender.

So the concept of rights is the part that is a bit foreign?

Yeah. That's a bit foreign. Looking at it from our own traditional background, we don't talk about the rights of women. That's a problem. And recently we started talking about the rights of children as well.

In the very rural community, you'll find that presently the men cannot make ends meet. If the rains fail, that is that. And for most part of the year, when you have run out of food and all that, it's women's duty and responsibility to take care of the family. The woman provides the food. And yet we say women have no rights. You know the woman is adding the traditional role of the man to her traditional role, and taking control. But then again you can't say that is control, because the man has married you and by virtue of your marriage to him, whatever you do he is still seen as the head of the family and the provider and all that.

And he can always sack you?

Yes. And that definitely is not fair, but it is the tradition. People think that is their culture, that is their tradition, that is their life, and they accept it. And most of them are even ignorant of the fact that their rights are being trampled upon. They must be sensitized. And in sensitizing them, you won't decrease the profit of the husband.

How has the response been at the local level?

Gender concepts are difficult. The men initially were saying things like "It's European" and "it won't work here." "It's not our tradition." And this was because gender was not understood. The men feared that women wanted to become men or take control and men would be pushed to the background. Men must accept that when women are trying to build confidence and take over that part, it doesn't mean that they are taking it over from the men.

We need to work on more sensitization with the men. We also need to talk to the women as well and help them to understand that just because you are beginning to experience power, power doesn't mean beginning to look down upon men or lording it over the men. But women are beginning to take active part in decisions and beginning to take initiatives. We need to make sure that they are part of the main organization.

When we conducted our needs assessment with the women, we asked them "What do you want to do?" And the idea of a women with disabilities association came out. Now we have the Women With Disabilities Association in all 24 districts. We are training the members in: group development, leadership, conflict resolution, advocacy business management, and planning. We are still capacity-building. It's working well. The women are excited about it, and happy that for the first time they are carrying out their own initiatives, getting support and don't need to depend upon the bigger organizations that mainly men control. I hope it will be sustained and supported and we'll begin to see an impact in a few years' time.

Gender Sensitivity Education Tools

The tools described and pictured here were developed by Linda Panels and Mariama Adama Issah

In our gender trainings, first we show a drawing of what we call the "gender equality donkey." In the drawing, a donkey is pulling a cart that holds a large container of water. You can see a wheel on this side and you know that by all means there's a wheel on the other side. So we ask people, "what if the wheels are not of equal sizes?" The people get interested and respond that the water tips over and pours out and it doesn't reach the community. Then we ask, "what if the wheels are of equal size?" They say that the ride is smooth, so the community's needs get met. And progress and development are possible.

Next we use two drawings of bicycles and riders. The bicycle is a good thing to use to explain about gender, because everyone knows who can and can't ride. The bicycle first used in the north of Ghana was a men's 10-speed. Only men could use it because of this high bar between the seat and handlebars. Women couldn't ride it wearing a cloth or skirt without exposing their thighs. Women are not allowed to do that here. So when a family lived in a small, remote cottage, the man would have to use this bicycle to do all the running around to provide food, take the child to school or to the doctor, and get water. So in such a situation, the man controls the bicycle and has sole access. The benefits may reach the family. But as I've used this teaching tool, people have commented that when men go and fetch water, the water will be sold for money, and so the water won't be for the family's use. So the benefit may not come to the family.

Over time - as we tell it -- the bicycle wears out, and by chance the man gets a different kind with a low bar. Now the woman can ride it without exposing her thighs. It is common these days to see women riding this bike. The man soon realizes that she can shop, take the child to school, and do so many things. So the woman now shares access to the bike, she sometimes controls it, and the benefit comes to the family. So if the man buys this one, the woman and also the children have access, some control, and the whole family benefits.

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