FEMALE TEACHERS CHALLENGED TO RE-ORIENT THEMSELVES (PAGE 32, NOV 19)

THE General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Mrs Irene Duncan-Adanusa, has challenged women in the teaching profession to re-orient themselves by regularly upgrading and building their capacities.
That, she noted, would enable them to acquire the requisite status, experience and confidence to be at the forefront of influencing decision-making, policies and programmes at the highest level to contribute to addressing the challenges posed by the world.
She pointed out that since women and children had always borne the brunt of global crises such as economic recession, environmental degradation, political upheaval, energy crisis, food insecurity, among others, it was important for them to forge a united front to enable them to influence policy formulation and implementation at all levels of human endeavour.
Addressing delegates to the second National Women’s GNAT Ladies roundtable conference in Kumasi on Monday, Mrs Duncan-Adanusa noted, “Women are still struggling with the scourge of low education in the 21st century and as such they are by-passed on basic issues that affect their survival.”
The three-day conference will afford participants the opportunity to take stock of their programmes and activities to enable them to set targets before they meet in four years’ time.
It will also afford them the opportunity to pass resolutions on critical issues affecting the progress of women in the union in particular and society in general.
The conference, which is on the theme, “Strengthening female teachers’ participation in union activities in the face of the global crisis”, is also intended to afford members the opportunity to educate Ghanaians on the activities of GNAT-LAS and other women’s groups in the West African sub-region.
About 700 members nation-wide attended the conference, while delegates from The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, as well as representatives from sister unions, such as the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU), the Ghana Registered Nurses Association and the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), also attended the conference and read solidarity messages.
Mrs Duncan-Adanusa noted that the GNAT-LAS conference was heading towards the goal of becoming an integral part of the quadrennial delegates conference of GNAT.
She pointed out that the struggle for women’s emancipation had never been easy “and we should not be deceived into thinking that any human endeavour could succeed through short-cuts”.
“It is important for us to make use of the skills acquired through workshops and seminars to build our capacities in a way that will make us exude an incomparable level of confidence and sophistication for doors to open for us anytime we make any attempt,” she stressed.
Earlier in her welcome address, the National Co-ordinator for Gender Programmes of GNAT-LAS, Mrs Helene Awurasa, had said the need to entrench organisational rules and policies, inadequate funding of their activities and programmes, lack of proper child-care facilities for babies of female teachers, as well as male chauvinism, the disproportionate burden of family responsibilities borne by many women and the impact of the HIV/AIDS on female teachers, remained their biggest challenges.
She said to address some of the challenges, GNAT-LAS had, since 2006, organised some programmes such as policy development, training and sensitisation, advocacy, research and networking, among others, for its members as a way of improving their skills.
She expressed the hope that the conference would provide the requisite experience in trade union politics and procedures for the members as a way of boosting their confidence to enable them to explore and address issues that affected them.