Systemic Barriers to Women in Politics: A Reflection on Ghana’s 2020 General Elections

In preparation for the 2020 general elections in Ghana, the leader of Ghana’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) and former President John D. Mahama picked the former vice- chancellor of the University of Cape Coast and former education minister under his administration Professor Jane Nana Opoku Agyeman as his vice-presidential candidate. This choice was met with criticism from the rank and file of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) with most of the attacks centred on her gender, rather than her meritocratic qualifications.

In preparation for the 2020 general elections in Ghana, the leader of Ghana’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) and former President John D. Mahama picked the former vice- chancellor of the University of Cape Coast and former education minister under his administration Professor Jane Nana Opoku Agyeman as his vice-presidential candidate. This choice was met with criticism from the rank and file of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) with most of the attacks centred on her gender, rather than her meritocratic qualifications. Although Ghana has a higher population of women, they are underrepresented in parliament and political leadership. While there is sufficiently reasonable evidence supporting the assertion that women have potential that can be tapped to meaningfully enhance social, economic and political development of nations, yet very little is done in Ghana to ensure that majority of women are involved in decision-making. This chapter is a post-mortem of Ghana’s 2020 general elections, pointing to the pre-election rhetoric against the NDC’s vice presidential candidate and post-election reality. It argues that the various institutional arrangement in the numerous political parties in Ghana does not support higher female representation and the enshrined cultural perception is that the woman’s role is in the home and not politics.