The Rights and Responsibilities Initiatives Ghana (RRIG), a Non-Governmental Organisation is calling for equal opportunities for women and girls to develop their abilities.
RRIG is a women-led organisation that seeks to promote the rights of vulnerable groups, especially girls and young women.
The Executive Director of RRIG, Madam Aba Oppong, who made the call, said there was the need for inclusivity for both males and females to ensure equal access to opportunities within their environment based on capacity.
Madam Oppong underlined the need for gender equality to begin at the early stage of life to empower girls to compete for opportunities with their male counterparts during adulthood.
She said women and girls had since time immemorial struggled and continue to struggle to demand their rights to life, education, health and other socio-economic rights.
“The right to education among other fundamental human and civic rights is curtailed when young girls are trafficked, defiled or given out in child marriage,” she pointed out.
She added that “the right to education is also curtailed when young girls are forced into child labour and unsafe abortions, which leave most of them in perpetual hopelessness and poverty.”
When a family prefers a boy child instead of a girl, her needs are never attended to, hence, she ends up not enjoying the right to life in its entirety, she said.
Sexual and reproductive health services, according to her, were available to women but sometimes some of them refused to use them based on their religious, cultural and personal beliefs.
She urged women to embrace knowledge, communication and technology to make them whole, strong and have the ability to break barriers hindering their progress.
