Women in the Media
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Araba Koomson

Araba Koomson was born on April 12, 1977; she is a Christian and worships with the Presbyterian Church. She has three siblings, a boy and two girls and she is the eldest. She is a broadcast journalist at Joy FM and reports, gathers news stories, writes stories, produces programmes and anchors (present the news) as well.

She had her basic to secondary education at Ghana International School (GIS) and continued to Ghana Airways School after which she worked as a traveling and ticketing executive at Ghana Airways. In fact she thought it was a lucrative job being an air hostess until she got into it and realized that it was not her field. She left Ghana Airways for Ghana Institute of Journalism where she got her Diploma in Journalism and first worked with the Daily Dispatch in 2001. She left Dispatch for Metro TV where she worked for three years before coming to Joy FM where she is currently and in her second year of work.

She has covered a lot of stories but one that really touched her was a story she did on prostitutes. GAB wanted prostitution legalized so she went out to interview some prostitutes and found out girls as young as 12 years were prostituting. That was a big shock to her. She covers parliament proceedings and that broadens her knowledge and she covers certain issues on women and children as well.

On the issue of the state of women and children in Ghana, she commends the various organizations fighting for the rights of women and children and urges them to keep up the good job. When she looks 10 years back, she realizes there’s been a lot of improvement in women especially standing up to be counted and that is a good sign for a brighter future for Ghana.

She covered the NRC process and was so much beaten by the torture and abuse some people went through in those days.

God is her source of inspiration and knowing there are only few women making impact in their communities challenges her to stand up to the task and work harder to the best of her ability. She is also inspired to do more when she realizes there is an opportunity for her to pass information on to others. Whenever she wakes up from bed, the first challenge she faces is to get something new to do so she could be recognized.

She has realized one thing in particularly in this part of the world that women and children lack access to justice. She hopes to be able to revolutionize the justice system in the country so that women and children will also be treated with some kind of dignity. There was a case of a 60-year-old man raping a 7-year-old child, a child old enough to be his grandchild and the case was taken out of court to be settled at home because they did not want the family to be disgraced. This is pure injustice at play. If the child had a say, she believes strongly she would have fought for the right punishment to be meted out to the man.

Women are still battling with getting access to land and property but thanks to some organisations giving out micro finance to these women for them to be able to acquire land and property. Women again lack the ability to make their own decisions and this is mostly seen about those in the rural areas. The man without the woman’s consent mostly takes a decision on the number of children they would want to have.

She believes when women get well educated and become financially independent the injustices done them would be reduced or totally curbed. Women form about 51% of the country’s population they therefore deserve to be included in all aspects of the running of the country’s economy. They have been sidelined for a long time now and it is hard time something was done about it.

She is all for the quota system. Women are part of the democratic process and so they must be given the opportunity to participate for a holistic run of the country.

She hopes to set up an NGO to disseminate information about HIV, work with all the media houses in Ghana, work with organisations that deal with women and children issues because she is inspired to help the vulnerable.

She wants to see Ghanaian women empowered to be independent, get educated and ensure better lives for their children. They should be financially independent.

She was a one-time track star back at school and broke a high jump record.

What she will do to help the Ghana at 50 celebrations is to disseminate information about Ghana, world wide. Ghana has had a checked path revered as a beacon of hope for many African countries and has a very stable political environment built on unity.