Gender Minister, Cynthia Morrison has assured citizens that the Affirmative Action Bill, which is to promote gender equality in the country will be passed before the end of 2020.

This comes after numerous calls by activists to get the Bill which has been drafted for over 15 years to be passed into law.

Speaking on Joy Fm’s Newsnite, the Minister said the Bill which has been presented to the Cabinet Committee has been thoroughly drafted and will soon be sent to Parliament for approval.

In response to whether the Bill will be passed before the end of this year, she said: “Yes, I can give you that assurance.

“The moment the committee passes it, it will be taken to Parliament because the President is anxious and so we have to expedite the process," she added.

Affirmative Action is a set of needed actions designed to correct a history of systematic discrimination and exclusion of women in the decision-making process.

The Bill, when passed, will help eliminate gender inequalities, based on the principle that every citizen shares an equal right to self- development, and that both men and women with equal abilities should have equal opportunities.

To this end, the Bill seeks to address the social, cultural, economic and political gender imbalance in Ghana based on the historical discrimination against women emanating from persistent patriarchal sociocultural systems and norms in spite of the gender equality of men and women.

And that will provide a framework for gender equality and the empowerment of women aimed at providing both the executive and legislative yardstick for measuring the commitment and progress of the country towards achieving gender equality.