Gender activists on Friday called for a review of the legal guidelines that deals with gender mainstreaming in the Local Government System.
They said as a signatory to the Beijing Platform of Action, government had the duty to uphold the tenets.
The platform serves as resource material for mobilising action and initiating policy reforms in favour of affirmative action and quotas.
Ms Hamida Harrison, Convener of Women's Right Coalition (WRC) called on the government to establish a legal platform based on an optimal technique, that focus on national priorities to facilitate fundamental structural changes within the assembly concept.
The WRC Convener made the call at a consultative workshop organised by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development in collaboration with the Institute of Local Government Studies (ILGS) and the German Development Service in Accra.
She said women in Ghana were still confronted by limited options and formidable social, economic and cultural barriers that had affected women's inclusiveness in decision-making.
"Power and influence in the management of political and economic processes for development has continued to be exercised around women while they have less access to these opportunities creating imbalance in the relation between the sexes and has become the basis of dominance in power structures," Ms Harrison said.
Ms Harrison said: "Without women in prominent positions in local government and national legislatures, it is unlikely that the full scale of gender issues would be addressed.
"In addition, the range of gender concerns from erosion of livelihoods, to maternal mortality, to HIV/AIDS and illiteracy, confers on the elected representatives a special responsibility."
Ms Harrison identified women's participation in politics and policymaking as a core concern in the struggle for equity and social justice.
"As Ghana strives to foster political pluralism, strengthen participatory democracy and good governance, the principle of integrating women as participants and beneficiaries in the processes of sustainable development becomes much more imperative," she noted.
Dr Esther Ofei-Aboagye, Director of ILGS said the consultation platform was captured in the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) Election 2008 Manifesto, which outlined the vision and direction for a Better Ghana.
Among other things the manifesto indicated that an NDC Government would organise a broad national stakeholder's conference on decentralisation to look at the conceptual issues in Ghana's local governance process as well as review the 20 years of its implementation to develop national policy.
Dr Ofei-Aboagye noted that after years of under-performance, Ghanaians had become cynical about the assemblies, therefore the review process was intended to rekindle popular interest in local governance and local level democracy.
She said to ensure that the stakeholder consultation process did not become an end in itself but a means to an end, a technical co-ordination team was managing the process.
Dr Offei-Aboagye said an expert advisory group had also been instituted to collate the outputs from the consultations and generate inputs for the national stakeholder consultation envisaged at the end of the year.
Mr Robert Kuwornu, Director of Policy at the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development said the consultation with gender activists was to provide an opportunity for women groups to contribute to the review process and reflect on the performance of the assembly system over the past 20 years especially in relation to the rights and participation of women.
He said it would also provide an opportunity for gender activists to examine the interpretations of the concept of decentralisation and issues that had arisen in the different sectoral approaches to its operation.
Groups participating in the consultation forum include; Women Activists from the NDC, and the Convention Peoples Party, Assemblywomen, African Women for Peace and Development Centre, and Advocate for Gender Equity.
Others are Ghana Trade Union Congress, Institute for Democratic Governance, Women Initiative for Self Empowerment, the Coalition on the Women's Manifesto, NETRIGHT Coalition and Coalition on the Domestic Violence Law.
