Sweety Aborchie Writes: The Half-Built Staircase, Women, Power, Politics (Issue 4)

Close your eyes, gentle reader, and try to see it. A woman on the forecourt of the Jubilee House on inauguration day, right hand raised, taking the oath as President of the Republic of Ghana. Hold the picture. Did it come easily, or did some part of your mind reach for a reason it could not be, wondering quietly whether the country is ready? That hesitation, that small flinch in the national imagination, is the most honest thing in our politics right now. And it is worth examining, because we have built an entire machinery to put women into the room and almost nothing to put one at the head of it. We are very good at the first task. We have barely attempted the second. And this issue is about the gap between the two; about why a woman can rise to within one step of the top and still find that last step quietly removed from under her.