Young girls have been advised to commit to grooming themselves to become women of substance to prevent men from requesting sexual favours from them.

a panel of distinguished and successful females in academia at the 3rd Prof. Margaret Gyapong Annual Lecture Mentorship Program asserted that females who best qualify for job positions and other roles are less likely to receive sexual favour requests.

The Prof. Margaret Gyapong Annual Lecture Mentorship Program was instituted by the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) to provide a platform to provide counselling to young women,

The program also exposes participants to personalities in all fields of life, to enable them to tap into their experience and expertise.

Addressing the 3rd Annual Lecture, the Pro Vice-Chancellor of Kumasi Technical University, Prof. Mrs. Abena Obiri-Yeboah lamented the inability of females to assume leadership positions in the country, citing the incident of only five traditional public universities having a 50/50 representation of males and females in top leadership positions.

She explained that though the government and world leaders have enacted enough laws to ensure gender diversity in leadership, females must position themselves to best qualify for the roles.

“Know that you need to position yourself so that when an opportunity presents itself, you will be able to pick it up otherwise no amount of signing, no amount of coding will get us there.

"We need to push, we need to strive harder, we need to put ourselves out there and we need to rise to the challenge, otherwise, the story is not going to change”, she said.

She expressed optimism that females can make positive impacts when assigned leadership roles.

“There is no doubt that given the opportunity, women and girls can effectively contribute to national development by providing solutions and fresh diverse perspectives to existing challenges”, she said.

The Vice Chancellor of UHAS, Prof Lydia Aziato kicked against sexual favours and urged young females to invest in grooming themselves.

The Director of the Institute of Health Research, UHAS, Prof. Margaret Gyapong implored the participants to be dedicated to God in all their endeavours.

She entreated young females to be committed to their studies and upliftment to enable them to stand out and be competent to prevent men from seeking sexual favours in exchange for job offers among others.

She underscored the significance of hard work to success and urged them to aspire for excellence in academics and anything they found themselves engaged in.

She also advised the participants to keep a clique of positive-minded persons who can positively contribute to the progress of their lives.

Five students were awarded ¢34,627 under the Dora Gertrude Quaye Memorial Scholarship Fund, instituted in memory of the late mother of Prof. Margaret Gyapong.