Encourage And Support Your Wives At Home – CSO Urges Husbands

The ActionAid Ghana, a Civil Society Organisation (CSO) working to promote women and children’s rights and well-being has called on husbands to assist their wives in the management of their homes.

It said if husbands assisted as expected in household chores and took care of the children, the level of stress on their wives because of numerous household duties and associated challenges would reduce considerably.

According to the Organisation, One of the most effective ways to help your spouse is to offer encouraging words. The word encourage means “to inspire courage.”

All of us have areas in which we feel insecure and lack courage, and that lack of courage often hinders us from accomplishing the positive things that we would like to do. The latent potential within your spouse may await your encouraging words.

When we receive positive words, we are encouraged to continue pursuing our dreams. When a man fails to get a promotion at work, he may feel that he is a failure. But when his wife says, “You’re still No. 1 in my book,” he has the courage to work through his disappointment and continue.

Mr Yaw Osei Boateng, Programme Officer of the Organisation in-charge of women’s right, said this during an interaction with women beneficiary groups of the CSO’s training and socio-economic empowerment programmes and community members about Unpaid Care Work (UCW) on Tuesday at Badu-Drobo in the Tain District of Brong-Ahafo Region.

UCW  formed part of ActionAid’s five year  “Promoting  Opportunity  for Women Empowerment and Right” (POWER) Project being funded by the  Ministry  of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and aims at  empowering  6,000 rural women  in the country.

Mr Boateng said women provided many services at homes and in the communities that consumed their times and energies without recognition and stated that UCW has been a key barrier to gender and women’s empowerment.

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Research by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has shown that Ghanaian women could earn an average of GHC 43,200 annually if paid for keeping their homes, he said.

This, he said, is because available report indicates that women spent 32 hours a week on housework alone as against seven hours by men which affected their personal and community development.

Mr Boateng said UCW reduced the time of women and their ability to participate in decision-making and consequently acquisition of knowledge and skills to improve their livelihood.

He expressed regret that too much household duties negatively affected the health status of women and suggested the need for the citizenry to be sensitized on UCW to reduce that burden on women.

Mr Tontie Binado, the Brong-Ahafo Regional Manager of ActionAid, said the POWER Project was benefitting 1,600 women in the  Tain and  Asutifi  South Districts to improve their capacities to demand their rights and ability to participate in household and community decision-making.

He said the project would ensure an environment that would support women’s economic empowerment so that voices of women, especially in the rural communities would be heard.

In that sense it would influence beneficiaries’ ability to control their income through the practice of Climate Resilient Sustainable Agriculture (CRSA), Mr Binado added.

Mr Mohammed Musah, an opinion leader in the community, said the project had brought unity in most homes in the area, saying that the women beneficiaries were happy with the support being offered by their husbands which had also increased the level of respect for women in the community.