The Pro Vice-Chancellor of the Akenten Appiah-Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development (AAMUSTED), Prof. Isaac Boateng, has advocated an improvement in existing systems to create avenues that inspire young women to work harder, achieve excellence, and attain higher statuses in society.
He believes that with deliberate and sincere efforts to achieve gender equality, promote women’s leadership and economic empowerment, and create room for the full participation of women in all spheres of life, women’s contributions could be key for expeditious national development.
Prof. Boateng was chairing the maiden Symposium, organised by the Department of Languages Education (DLE), AAMUSTED, to promote women’s empowerment at the Kumasi Campus of the University on March 14, 2025.
The event with the theme – “Beyond the Margins: Women’s Writing and the Politics of Inclusion” – was partly to commemorate the International Women’s Day. It attracted participants from different fields of study.
Prof. Boateng was happy that DLE had focused efforts to imbue young women with the right mindset for a future where they could be assertive and challenge their under-representation.
Comparing the modern day to a couple of decades ago, he observed that women of the modern day have good examples and rapidly improving environmental conditions to leverage for greatness.
The Pro Vice-Chancellor highlighted the exploits of the likes of the first Vice President of Ghana, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang; female Members of Parliament and Ministers of State, academic stalwarts, Chief Executive Officers, and celebrated female entrepreneurs, etc., and encouraged young women to emulate their examples.
He reminded them that lending themselves to education seriously was an essential first step to making it in life, successfully.
“As young women, commit yourselves to reading; you must read or perish,” he advised the hundreds of female university students who participated in the Symposium.
The Dean of the Faculty of Education and Communication Sciences (FECS), Prof. Faith Ben-Daniels, spoke about the struggles and achievements of women, anchoring them on a variety of literature.
She encouraged contemporary writers to highlight the concept of “women saviours.” That in her view, would create room to accommodate the impact of women in nation-building.
In line with the theme, other speakers delivered captivating presentations on the role of women in averting suppression and the passive roles assigned to them in literature and history.
For instance, a Senior Lecturer at DLE, Dr. Jonathan Essuman, relied on the ecofeminist-mothers approach to illustrate how nature as a feminist creature saved its inhabitants from the excesses of suppressors and recommended that the welfare of the citizenry, especially women, should be prioritised to promote harmonious co-existence of humans and non-humans.
Similarly, a Senior Lecturer from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Dr. (Mrs.) Philomena Ama Okyeso Yeboah, also called for a lasting collaboration from men “to move the women from the margins to the centre.”
“We can achieve this by giving prominence to women characters in present-day writings and lifting them from subservient roles,” she said.
