Stop Gendered Attacks On Lordina Mahama And Samira Bawumia – POWA Warns
The Progressive Organisation for Women’s Advancement (POWA) has expressed deep concern about the rise in personal attacks, insults, and gendered mockery directed at First Lady Lordina Mahama and former Second Lady Samira Bawumia.
In a statement signed by its Founder and President, Dr Victoria Lakshmi Hamah, POWA said the attacks go beyond partisan political exchanges and reflect a troubling pattern in which prominent women are subjected to personal humiliation, undermining women’s collective dignity and political agency.
“We wish to make one principle clear: women can belong to different political parties, hold different political views, and disagree strongly without becoming enemies,” the organisation stated.
According to POWA, Lordina Mahama and Samira Bawumia have both held highly visible positions within Ghana’s political leadership and have platforms to advance the interests of women, girls, and vulnerable communities.
“Those platforms should not become instruments of pitting women against one another,” it said.
POWA has therefore called on Women’s Rights Organisations, women’s groups, Civil Society Organisations, and all right-thinking Ghanaians to reject the normalisation of gendered insults and personal attacks on women in public life.
The group clarified that its call is not to shield either woman from legitimate public scrutiny, noting that women in political and public office must remain accountable for their words, actions, and policies.
“However, accountability is fundamentally different from humiliation, misogyny, and personal attacks,” the statement stressed.
POWA argued that when women are encouraged to expend their political energy fighting one another, attention is diverted from structural inequalities that continue to limit women’s participation and influence.
“When women divide, unequal power systems benefit,” it warned, citing inadequate political representation, economic inequality, violence against women and girls, unequal access to opportunities, unpaid care burdens, and barriers to decision-making as challenges requiring collective action.
The organisation urged Ghana’s most visible women in politics to use their platforms to identify areas of common interest and advance a collective women’s agenda, even when they disagree politically.
“Lordina Mahama need not agree with Samira Bawumia, and vice versa. Solidarity does not require political uniformity. It requires recognising that advancing women’s collective development is bigger than any political party,” POWA said.
It called on women across Ghana to resist reproducing divisions that have historically weakened women’s collective bargaining power, urged men who believe in equality to reject gendered political attacks, and appealed to political actors to demonstrate that political competition can coexist with respect for women’s dignity.
Click to read more: https://opemsuo.com/author/hajara-fuseini/
