The Department of Gender – Volta, as part of this year’s International Women’s Day celebration, put together an outdoor event dubbed #BreakTheBias Males Cook Art.
The contest brought together men in key leadership positions in the region to showcase their culinary skills. While the activity was a contest of skills, it further served as a medium of advocacy to solicit support for creating awareness on gender roles and support for empowering our men and boys to support their wives, mothers and sisters at home.
Among the objectives of the celebration are:
- Create awareness on existing biases against women and girls and forge partnerships to address them.
- To bring men in key positions together to articulate #BreakTheBias campaign message and show commitment towards equal opportunity through supporting women and girls.
- To create the platform to sensitize participants on the theme for the 2022 IWD celebration and break the myths and bias about male involvement in unpaid care work.
- To receive commitment messages from key stakeholders to #BreakTheBias against women and girls and create a conducive environment for them to thrive.
The build up to the IWD 2022 saw a number of advocacy meetings with key stakeholder organizations, social media campaign on the Department of Gender’s Facebook wall and page as well as staff WhatsApp platform. The advocacy meetings were aimed at getting persons in authority to commit themselves to a pledges that leads to breaking the bias in their organizations.
These meetings include
- Meet up with the leadership of the Muslim Community
- Time with the Regional House of Chiefs
- Session with the Moderator of the E.P Church
- Advocacy meeting with the Local Council of Churches
- Advocacy session with the Catholic Bishop of the Ho Diocese
- Radio Discussion
- Leadership Training
Full text, pictures and a video snippet of the celebration can be accessed in the document and video below: