Ministère de la Protection de la Femme et de l’Enfance - Ghana
The Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs (MOWAC) was established by an Executive Instrument (EI 8) in January 2001. This was as a result of the realization by government that, there was the urgent need for high level sector organization, which will specifically be responsible for coordinating national response to gender inequality and to promote the implementation of activities that address the rights of women and children towards advancing the status of women and the growth, survival and development of our children.
MOWAC is now therefore the National Women's Machinery (NWM), a structure that most governments have created to respond to the need for institutional arrangement for addressing issues on women's advancement. The UN defines National Women's Machinery as a 'single body or complex organized system of bodies, often under different authorities, but recognized by the Government as the institution dealing with the promotion of the status of women'. As a relatively new WM, MOWAC has the opportunity to learn from challenges that others have overcome and to create decentralized National machinery that effectively promotes the status of women in Ghana.
The mandate of MOWAC is to initiate/formulate policies to promote gender mainstreaming across all sectors that will lead to the achievement of gender equality and empowerment of women and facilitate the survival, development and growth of children. MOWAC as a Central Management Agency (CMA) with Cabinet status has the responsibility to monitor policy formulation and programme implementation in the sector areas, coordinate cross-sector issues on women and children and evaluate the impact of sector policies on women and children. The strategic position of MOWAC lies in the fact that issues related to women and children are cross cutting and therefore, require collaborative sector efforts to achieve desired goals.
