Dr Gloria Clarissa Dzeha, Board Chair of Accra Girls’ Senior High School (AGSHS), has urged parents to socialise their girl-children in ways that will help the girls to develop inquiry minds.
She noted that parents mostly gave baby dolls and cooking items to girls whilst boys were provided with computer gadgets and play items such as helicopters.
Such an approach, she said, restricted girls to childbearing and domestic roles whilst the boys would dismantle and fix back the gadgets to develop engineering and technological minds.
Whilst acknowledging that it was good for girls to learn childbearing and domestic roles, Dr Dzeha emphasised, however, that girls should also be exposed to the computer gadgets, puzzles and other activities that would enable them to explore and develop inquiry minds.
Dr Dzeha said this when she addressed some students of AGSHS during the 2024 International Women’s Day celebration under the adapted theme: “Inclusion for Progress and Respect”.
The event, which took place on the school’s premises, was organised by the Accra Girls’ Old Students Association (AGOSA).
“God has blessed both males and females. Everything that the men must get to the top, God has also endowed us as women with it, so we have no excuse to say that we don’t have what it takes to reach the top,” Dr Dzeha said.
She stressed, however, that for women to reach the top, they must make deliberate effort, psych themselves up, remain resilient and take charge of their own lives.
She encouraged the students to be versatile so they could create multiple sources of income and to push the frontiers of national development.
Mrs Miranda Degraft-Amanfu, National Vice President of AGOSA, said women needed to change their mindset and understand that whatever they put their mind to, they could achieve it.
She urged the students to find what they loved to do best and commit to excel at it.
“Whatever your hands find doing, do it with all your heart, and it will take you where you never dreamt that you would go,” she said.
She added that girls must be bold, speak up, and stand up for what they believed in, and through that, they could “conquer the world”.
Mrs Gifty Andoh, Headmistress of AGSHS, encouraged girls to take their education seriously and work hard to empower themselves so that, they would become worthy role models, lead their society and attain the respect they desired.
“When empowered, remember to humble yourself, and be respectful to men,” she added.
She stressed that both boys and girls must be given equal opportunities to develop their leadership potential and to pursue courses according to their strengths.
She urged the students to become ambassadors of women’s empowerment and inclusion.
Professor Adelaide Kastner, National President of AGOSA, said human beings were endowed with different abilities and so students must not copy blindly or make unhealthy comparisons.
She encouraged the students to cooperate with their male counterparts so that together, they could achieve great successes in life.
Some of the students performed a poem that called for collaboration between males and females, stressing that, inclusion of women was “the panacea to the socioeconomic hardships of humanity”.
GNA
KK
11 Mar. 24
