'A Femocrat just doing my Job': Working within the State to Advance Women's Empowerment in Ghana

Following the round of UN Conferences on Women from the 1970s to the 1990s, many states in the developing world established national machineries to first 'integrate women into development', and later to spearhead the task of gender mainstreaming adopted in the Beijing Platform for Action. 

Analyses of these national machineries in different African countries suggest their effectiveness is constrained by, among other things, inadequate conceptualisations of mandates and functions and inadequate resources, including personnel. In this chapter, we analyse Ghana's Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs (MOWAC) to understand how gender issues have been conceptualised and treated institutionally. 

To anchor our analysis, we include reflections by a former senior bureaucrat within the ministry, Francesca Pobee-Hayford, to understand the challenges and possibilities of working to advance gender equity within the Ghanaian state.