Background

Ghana, located on the West African coast, is bordered by Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south. Its climate is tropical, with two main seasons : the wet season from April to September and the dry season from October to March.
Ghana faces various natural disasters, including floods, droughts, coastal erosion, and occasional outbreaks of diseases like cholera. Flooding is particularly prevalent during the rainy season due to poor drainage systems and urbanization. Coastal erosion affects coastal communities, leading to loss of land and displacement of people.

This Policy Brief highlights the gender specific gaps and opportunities for gender mainstreaming in disasters related national and local-level policies, institutions and programs in order to give equal weight to the rights as well as capacities of both men and women.

Policy and Institutional Mechanisms

Despite efforts to address gender disparities, systemic norms still affect women’s participation and contribution to societal issues in Ghana. However, the country has made strides in promoting gender equality, including initiatives to increase women’s representation in leadership positions across various sectors.
Even though policies such as the National Gender Policy (2015), Health Sector Gender Policy (2009) and Ghana Plan of Action on Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation policy (2011–2015) offer transformative approaches aimed at enhancing women’s resilience to disasters, the nuanced roles, needs, and expertise of men and women and the methods of managing them during disaster situations require intentional gender integration.
The National Gender Policy (2015) recognize the importance of addressing gender disparities in disaster risk management (DRM) and outbreak and epidemic (O&E) response. However, there is a need for structured implementation strategies to ensure women’s protection and participation during crises.
Women are often excluded from crucial activities like planning, budgeting, and data collection, resulting in decisions being made without adequately considering their perspectives. At the local level, women are vulnerable because they are secondary recipients of valuable information that could affect their ability to cope during disaster situations.

Most decision-making positions are occupied by men and where women have been invited to the table, the reluctance to voice their concerns because of shyness or the fear of speaking in the presence of their partners has been a major challenge to having policies and programmes that effectively benefit women’s health, support disaster management, outbreaks and relief efforts.
Gender disparities persist in DRM and O&E response, with women often excluded from decision-making processes and facing challenges in accessing valuable information. Addressing these gaps and integrating gender perspectives into policies and programs is essential for effective disaster management and response efforts in Ghana.

Key Points

1. Disasters have a differential impact on women, men and persons with disabilities.
2. The exposure and vulnerability of women and persons with disabilities to disaster risk can be reduced through equal access to disaster resilient information and inclusive decision-making structures.
3. Access to sex and disability disaggregated data could heelp in fine-tuning DRM and O&E
   initiatives to effectively address the different needs of the various groups.
4. Building the capacity and empowering women can help them to contribute to DRM, outbreak and emergencies response and recovery efforts.

Key Challenges

• Patriarchal Leadership Systems. Women are inadequately represented in leadership and decision-making systems meaning that the specific needs and risks faced by women, dring disaster situations are rarely prioritized.
• Insufficient Funding for Gender Programmes. Inadequate, delayed funding hampers gender-responsive disasters efforts.
• Insufficient Disaggregated Data. Lock of disaggregated data hinders inclusive disaster management.
• Inadequate Technical Capacity of Stakeholders to Mainstream Gender into Disaster Situations. Limited stakeholder knowledge hampers gender-inclusive disaster management

Policy Recommendations