When Women Divide, Unequal Power Wins

There is a particular kind of cruelty reserved for women in public life, and Ghana has grown far too comfortable with it.

The insults thrown at First Lady Lordina Mahama and former Second Lady Samira Bawumia are not new. What is new is how routine they have become and how easily a radio panel or a social media thread slides from criticising a policy to mocking a woman’s appearance, her marriage, her accent and even her very right to speak. We have watched it happen for years, and we have largely said nothing. This is wrong. This has to stop.

The Progressive Organisation for Women’s Advancement (POWA) has now said something. In a statement signed by its founder, Dr. Victoria Lakshmi Hamah, the group called for an end to the gendered attacks on both women and warned, in words worth repeating, that “when women divide, unequal power systems benefit.”

POWA is right, and this newspaper supports that call without reservation.

Let us be clear about what this editorial is not saying. It is not saying that Lordina Mahama and Samira Bawumia should be shielded from scrutiny. They are public figures. Their husbands have led, or sought to lead, this country. The foundations they run, the causes they champion, the public money and goodwill they attract and all of it are fair game for examination.

But there is a line between holding a public figure accountable and trying to humiliate her into silence. POWA drew that line well: “Accountability is fundamentally different from humiliation, misogyny, and personal attacks.”

Gendered attacks on political women travel fastest when they are dressed up as partisan loyalty. Supporters of one party mock the woman on the other side, and supporters of that other side mock back. Each side tells itself it is only defending its own. Neither side notices that the same woman is being diminished and indirectly, that the same message is being sent to every girl in Ghana who dares to think she might one day enter public life.

The most striking part of POWA’s statement is its direct appeal to the two women at the centre of the storm. The organisation asked Lordina Mahama and Samira Bawumia to consider leading a conversation on women’s political solidarity that crosses party lines.

It is an unusual and brave request. The two women sit on opposite sides of the deepest political divide in the country. Their husbands have been political rivals. Their parties have spent years at each other’s throats. Asking them to stand together on anything is asking a great deal.

But POWA is not asking them to agree. It is asking them to recognise that their shared experience as women in the political spotlight is bigger than the parties they married into.  That is a mature position, and it deserves a mature response.

If these two women could demonstrate that political opponents can disagree fiercely without destroying one another, they would teach this country something no manifesto ever has.

The New Publisher calls on all political actors to stop tolerating gendered attacks within their own ranks. We have to stop dressing up misogyny as commentary. And we call on ordinary Ghanaians who find these attacks distasteful to say so out loud, rather than scrolling past in silence.

Ghana needs more women at the table. It needs women who can argue, compete and disagree without being torn apart for it. That will not happen if the women who do step forward are met with mockery instead of scrutiny.

POWA is right in calling for the nonsense to stop.