Ghana - Strategic country gender assessment : briefing note for the Ghana poverty reduction strategy

39331 Draft: 1/14/2002 GHANA STRATEGIC COUNTRY GENDER ASSESSMENT (Briefing Note for the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy) I. Introduction and Overview 1. This brief Strategic Country Gender Assessment (SCGA) summarizes relevant Box 1: Gender: What Does It Mean? gender issues in Ghana as part of the effort to Gender concerns the changing roles and power support the more systematic integration of relations between men and women as socially gender concerns into the Ghana Poverty and culturally defined. Gender relations, Reduction Strategy (GPRS).3 This note uses the therefore, are contextually specific and often I-PRSP as its principal reference point for change to altering economic circumstances. country dialogue, and suggests ways in which Sources: UNU/INIRA1, and Moser.2 the GPRS can more fully integrate gender issues. A summary gender profile of Ghana is in Annex 1. A summary of core country work program tasks is in Annex 2. 2. The SCGA for Ghana is organized as follows. Part II contains a profile of core gender issues in Ghana addressing: (i) the different socio-economic roles of men and women, including their participation in both the market and household economies; (ii) gender disparities in access to, control over, and use of assets and productive resources; (iii) gender disparities in human 1 Working Group: UNU/INIRA Agenda for Gender and Natural Resources Conservation and Management, 1997. 2 Moser,C 1993: Gender Planning and Development: theory, practice and training. Routledge, London and New York. p. 230. 3 This desk review of gender issues in Ghana is more illustrative than exhaustive. Three points must be borne in mind. First, no review of the Ghana project portfolio or pipeline has been undertaken, though this would be a useful exercise in formulating a gender-responsive work program. Second, the note does not reflect consultations with Government or other stakeholders that took place in conjunction with the November 14, 2001 "Engendering the GPRS" workshop. Since "gender" is not a "sector", but rather cuts across many sectors, the issues raised in this SCGA will need to be addressed ("mainstreamed"), as appropriate, across different sectoral interventions. Third, as is often the case, sex-disaggregated data, and other data relevant for gender analysis (especially with respect to economic issues and poverty diagnostics) are often scarce, unreliable, and/or not systematically available. With help of the Africa Country Gender Database (ACGD), the "gender profile" of Ghana (in Annex 1) was built, with a view to improving the validity and policy usefulness of the data presented. Comments will be especially welcome.  GHANA