Free SHS is a catalyst for women empowerment – Barbara Boafo

Mrs Barbara Boafo, NPP-USA Women’s Organizer has commended the Nana Akufo-Addo led government for introducing the Free Senior High School (SHS) Policy which has offered more girls an opportunity to get secondary education, who hitherto, would have been drop-outs.

This she said, had “regenerated self-worth and confidence among the girls such that after school they would be able to work on themselves, by themselves, for themselves which would make them stand in the battle of life and fight for themselves.

“They don’t need to be dependent on anyone else. They will have the capacity to work on their own and will have the right to make each and every decision of their life by themselves”, she emphasized.”

Mrs. Boafo was speaking to the Ghana News Agency during the International Day of the Girl Child, which was marked last Friday, on the theme, “Girl Force: Unscripted and Unstoppable.”

She said the NPP government had taken measures to promote the fulfilment of girls and women potential through education, skills development and the eradication of illiteracy for all girls and women without discrimination of any kind, giving paramount importance to the elimination of poverty and ill health.

Mrs. Boafo pointed out that when women are educated, they would have the guts to fight for their own and build the habit of speaking for their own basic rights.

She said women's empowerment was all about “equipping and allowing women to make life-determining decisions, through the different problems in society, and this includes the action of raising the status of women through education, raising awareness, literacy, and training.”

She observed that people were empowered when they are able to access the opportunities available to them without limitations and restrictions such as in education.