Visit the AudienceScapes Africa Research page for further Research and Analysis of Ghana
AudienceScapes Field Blog
Ghana’s Competitive Mobile Market Spurs Multiple Apps
KEY COMMUNICATION AND DEVELOPMENT WEBSITES AND PROJECTS
World Bank Knowledge Economy Index- Ghana
World Bank Governance Matters Indicators- Ghana
World Bank Doing Business 2009-Ghana
UNESCO Education Statistics- Ghana
UNDP Human Development Report- Ghana
Mobile Active Statistics- Ghana
AIDA Development Activities Gateway- Ghana
Ibrahim Governance Index- Ghana
IREX Media Sustainability Index- Ghana
Ghana Communication and Gender
Return to see a complete demographic profile of survey respondents in Ghana.
Click here to read about the urban-rural divide in Ghana.
Communication And Gender In Ghana
Development organizations should also be cognizant of lower self-reported access to and use of media and ICT sources by women than men. When asked about household access, women in the AudienceScapes 2009 survey in Ghana were less likely than men to report having access to media and ICTs (Chart 1)
This may be somewhat misleading, given that interview subject selection was randomized to the individual level and thus household indicators should not display such a gender gap. One possible explanation is that women did not say they had access to items in the home if they did not actually use the items or were not permitted to use them.
Chart 1
Figures in Chart 2 indicate that radio remains the surest way to reach women, particularly if the programming is in Akan languages and focuses on some of the issues to which the majority of women say they pay attention (Chart 3 and 4).
Chart 2
As shown, far fewer women than men professed to be capable in English. Women in the survey not only said they listen to radio regularly, they also overwhelmingly said they trust the information they receive by radio. For example, 95 percent of women said the information radio programs provide about health is (somewhat or very) trustworthy, while 82 percent said the same regarding information about personal finance. Eighty-five percent of female farmers said they trusted the information they get about farming from the radio. For each of the development topics covered in this study, radio topped the list of trustworthy sources.
Click here to see the central role of radio for communication with every segment of the population.
By way of comparison: for health information, medical doctors came next (92 percent of women) while for personal finance information and farming information the next most widely trusted source was friends and family (78 and 84 percent of women, respectively); for all three types of information, the internet was the least widely trusted (14 percent of women for health information, 16 percent for financial information, and 12 percent for information about farming).
Chart 3
Chart 4
