Tamale: Hajia Lamnatu Adam, Executive Director of Songtaba, a development-centred NGO operating in the Northern Region, has expressed concern over the disproportionate impact of time poverty on women and girls. She highlighted how it limits opportunities for education, economic empowerment, and participation in public life.
According to Ghana News Agency, Hajia Lamnatu explained that the heavy burden of unpaid care and domestic responsibilities placed on women and girls continues to perpetuate gender inequality, especially in rural and underserved communities. She made these remarks during a two-day training workshop held in Tamale for women’s rights organizations focused on unpaid care work and time poverty.
The workshop was organized by the Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT), in partnership with Alinea International, with funding support from Global Affairs Canada under the United for Care – Sensitive Approaches to Rights and Empowerment (UCARE) project. It was themed ‘Unpaid, Underprivileged: Time Poverty and Gender Roles.’
Hajia Lamnatu noted that many girls are forced to drop out of school or miss out on learning hours because they spend significant portions of their day performing domestic chores such as cooking, fetching water, and taking care of younger siblings. She emphasized that this cycle of unpaid care work robs women and girls of the time they need to develop themselves to break out of poverty.
She called for targeted investments in infrastructure such as water systems, childcare facilities, and energy access to ease the burden of unpaid care work on women. Additionally, she urged policymakers to integrate care work into local and national development planning, stressing the importance of recognizing, reducing, and redistributing unpaid care work to achieve gender equality and inclusive development.
Participants at the workshop engaged in practical sessions on gender division of labour, care-sensitive policy development, and community-level advocacy strategies. The training was part of efforts to build the capacity of women’s rights organizations to advocate for policies that address unpaid care work and promote time equity in households and communities.