International Women’s Day 2015
By: V-Dem Staff
Mar 08, 2015
Although the focus of the celebrations varies from appreciation and love towards women in general to the acknowledgement of challenges and barriers faced by women every day, it is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to the issue of gender equality, a central and crucial element of democracy.
The V-Dem Female empowerment index, displayed in the graph below, consists of eight elements: women in civil society organizations, female journalists, freedom from domestic violence and forced labour for women, freedom of discussion for women, property rights for women, access to justice for women and power distributed by gender. Power distributed by gender refers to political power and is included in the graph separately, accompanied by the Electoral democracy index.
In Ghana, female empowerment has improved during the 20th century compared to electoral democracy. Power distribution by gender has consistently become more equal since independence but remains at a highly unequal level pointing to a serious challenge for democracy in the country. The overall female empowerment index shows a much stronger development and fluctuation often following the Electoral democracy index as it appears as if generally, electoral democracy has been a very important corollary to female empowerment in the country. The fact that Power distributed by gender is performing far worse than the Female empowerment index indicates that there are other indicators included in the index driving the positive development of female empowerment.
