Dorcas Coker-Appiah

Dorcas Ama Frema Coker-Appiah is a lawyer and women's rights campaigner who leads the Gender Studies and Human Rights Documentation Centre in Accra, known as the Gender Centre. She was born in Wenchi on 17 August 1946.

She took her law degree at the University of Ghana in 1970. In 1974 she was a founding member of FIDA Ghana, the federation of women lawyers, and served as its vice-president and then president from 1990 to 1991, also leading its legal aid and legal literacy work. She was a founder of Women in Law and Development in Africa's Ghana branch and chaired the network's African regional board.

Her research at the Gender Centre has shaped the national conversation on domestic violence. The centre's 1999 national study, Breaking the Silence and Challenging the Myths of Violence Against Women and Children in Ghana, was one of the first large surveys of its kind in the country, and she has since co-written studies on patriarchy and partner violence in the Central Region.