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“The President's Prerogative”? The Cabinet Appointment Process in Ghana and the Implications for Gender Parity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2021

Gretchen Bauer Open the ORCID record for Gretchen Bauer [Opens in a new window]  and
Akosua K. Darkwah
Gretchen Bauer
Affiliation:
University of Delaware
Akosua K. Darkwah
Affiliation:
University of Ghana
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Abstract

This article seeks to understand why Ghana, unlike several other African countries, has seen relatively few women appointed as ministers to the cabinet since the transition to democracy. We draw on Annesley, Beckwith, and Franceschet's 2019 book Cabinets, Ministers and Gender, which provides an in-depth analysis of the cabinet appointment process in seven democracies (but no African cases) and demonstrates that the cabinet appointment process is gendered—that is, men and women have different (and unequal) opportunities to be appointed as cabinet ministers. This article covers Ghana's Fourth Republic, during which women's presence in cabinets has increased slowly but steadily. We rely on media reports from five recent presidential administrations and semistructured, in-depth interviews with selected informants, as well as other primary and secondary sources. We find that while Ghana has a fairly empowered president who could appoint a gender parity cabinet, the formal and informal rules governing the selection of cabinet ministers—for example, those related to regional balance and “minister MPs”—work against more women in the cabinet.

Keywords

Women cabinet ministerswomen in politicsGhanacabinet ministers in Africa
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 546 - 573
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Women, Gender, and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

We would like to acknowledge the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa at the University of Ghana, which hosted Gretchen Bauer for a Senior Fellowship in late 2019, during which time the research for this article was completed. We would like to thank Professor Abena Oduro and Dr. Hassan Wahab for assistance in arranging some interviews. We appreciate the helpful comments of anonymous reviewers of this article.

References

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