Meet Rosemond Asiamah Nkansah: Ghana’s first female police officer who caused the biggest change ever in the Police service…
Madam Rosemond Asiamah Nkansah is the first Ghanaian woman to have been enlisted into the Ghana Police Service, then known as Gold Coast Police Force.
Police Woman One (PW/1) Rosemond Asiamah Nkansah turned 90 years today, as noted by BieGyaNation.Com
Born on January 13th, 1930, Madam Rosemond Asiamah Nkansah who was a holder of Senior Cambridge and Teacher’s Certificate ‘A’, taught briefly before joining the police force.
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At age 22, Madam Rosemond Asiamah Nkansah, together with 11 other women, was enlisted into the then Gold Coast Police Force on September 1, 1952.
Before she was enlisted, the police force had been male dominated since its establishment in 1894.
Madam Rosemond Asiamah Nkansah later resigned from the police force because she wanted to marry which had been forbidden by the force, and as a professional teacher, she back to the teaching profession and taught at St John’s Grammar School from 1961 to 1964.
After teaching for sometime, Ms Asiamah joined the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) in 1965 and was in charge of school broadcasting programmes for a year.
She retired and became a full-time housewife trading in building materials until she retired from active service in 1999 and devoted her time to writing books, translating words in her book Octagon into both foreign and local languages.
Ghanaian Police women were forbidden to marry whilst in service
According to Commissioner of Police (COP) Mrs Jane Donkor (retd), it was on record that during the time of the first 12 women in the service, they were forbidden to marry or get pregnant and were compelled to resign if they wanted to go contrary to that directive, and that led to the resignation of some women who joined the service after the first 12.
COP Mrs Donkor said after serving for five years and nine months, PW/1 Rosemond Asiama Nkansah decided to marry so she resigned, “but thinking that women were not being fairly treated as their male counterparts who were allowed to marry and bear children, she decided to do something about it before leaving”.
Before her resignation on May 16, 1958, PW/1 Rosemond Asiama Nkansah petitioned the administration and the clause was removed; thus allowing women in the service to marry and bear children and causing those who had resigned to start their families to be reinstated.
President Kwame Nkrumah’s role
The late President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah played a significant role in ensuring the inclusion of more women in the police force as it was a male dominated institution.
In order to achieve this, President Nkrumah gave his assent to recruiting women, which became the nucleus of a new branch of the force with the purpose of handling problems and issues affecting women, children and juveniles who were either victims of crime, missing or had allegedly engaged in some form of crime.
After three months of intensive training, PW/1 Rosemond Asiamah Nkansah, together with her 11 squad mates, passed out on December 1, 1952.
The first 12 policewomen lived up to the expectations of President Nkrumah throughout their years in the police force.
Source: George Awiadem Maclean | BieGyaNation.Com
