Today is International Women's Day. It is entirely fitting and proper that on a day set aside to honour women, globally, patriotic men of goodwill and good conscience in Ghana, should salute our nation's hardworking and industrious womenfolk.
Ghanaian women have always played a significant role in the development of our nation.
On the political front, for example, many market women supported Kwame Nkrumah, and the Convention People's Party (CPP), during the fight to rid the Gold Coast of the British colonial occupiers of our country.
They continued to do so after Ghana gained its independence from Britain in 1957 - by contributing cash to the CPP.
Today, women are a powerful presence, in the informal sector of our national economy - despite the many societal barriers that many of them have had to contend with in accessing finance over the years.
Male chauvinism has undoubtedly played a part in oppressing women in Ghana historically. It is the reason why so many powerful men from the top strata of society get away with raping women in Ghana - even when their victims are underage teenagers.
And the fact that there is still a great deal of misogyny in Ghanaian society today is also not in doubt.
The endless pillorying of the new chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Ms. Charlotte Osei, is a case in point. If she had been a man, she would have been given the space and time, to settle down in her job. In many ways, Ghanaian women are effectively second-class citizens in their own homeland, the Republic of Ghana.
Indeed, there are a number of fair-minded and discerning males, in Ghana, who will insist, if asked, that that is one of the reasons why women, who outnumber men in the country's overall population, still don't have half of the seats in Parliament reserved for them - and people with disabilities - when they should: in what after all is the 21st century.
In their view, if roles were reversed, and it was men who faced discrimination in society, they would demand that half the seats in Parliament, ought to be reserved for Ghanaian men.
One's hope, is that the CPP's presidential candidate, Mr. Ivor Greenstreet, will make the reservation of half of the total number of seats in Parliament for women - and people with disabilities - a key plank of his campaign for the November presidential election.
Women are the backbone of countless families throughout Ghana - and play a key role in nurturing children and in ensuring that all their offspring, male and female, are educated.
That is why if we want to prepare young people in Ghana, today, for tomorrow's challenges and opportunities, society must find practical ways to encourage women to support their children and wards, of both genders, to learn to code.
Corporate Ghana, which stands to benefit tremendously if the next generation of tertiary students learn to code today, whiles at primary school, ought to seriously consider helping Ms. Ernestina Edem Appiah's Ghana Code Club, to spread its wings countrywide, in collaboration with the Ghana Education Service.
Perhaps they could work with Codecademy, Alphabet (Google) and Facebook to organise and fund such an initiative in Ghana?
And, if we want our country to actually progress, then the time has come to make Ghana a nation that practises gender parity. It will enable our nation to benefit from its female population's talent-pool's many gifts. And we will be showing the world what a wise and progressive people we are.
As a people, let us make a start in that direction, by ensuring that half of those appointed to positions in the upper echelons of all public-sector entities, are women who qualify for those positions.
Gender parity is key to making Ghana an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia. Most, definitely. This blog salutes all Ghanaian women on International Women's Day!
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