Gender (Women) Roles Institutional Frameworks and Community Development: How Ghana Compares to Southeast Asian Countries

Abstract

The creation of socio-cultural and political institutions in society helps to understand and appreciate the contribution of women. Several researchers have pointed to the above position as an essential ingredient in communities’ struggle to empower and engage women especially and other minority groups in development decision-making processes. Using examples of institutional reform efforts and how that has impacted gender roles and women’s participation in public decision-making process in the form of a case study from Southeast Asia, this paper sets the stage to evaluate where Ghana stands in her quest to reform institutions to recognize the contributions of women at all levels of development decision-making. Much as evidence exist of some remarkable progress in Ghana on reform of institutions that affect gender and development, certain social and cultural practices still militate against the realization of the ultimate goals of economic development. Socio-cultural and economic factors, and to an extent political gamesmanship have been identified as working against all the efforts to ensure that Ghanaian societies are gender equal through poverty eradication, capacity building, empowerment and participation of women in development decision-making processes.

Keywords: Gender roles; Institutional reforms; Community development

JEL Classification: J16, J71, J78, O21, Z00