morning session | wip | day 1

Carol Flore-Smereczniak, Pacific Regional Millennium Development Goals Specialist, UNDP:

It is possible for other countries to change these trends and it is possible for the Pacific to do it. Some trends of inequality have become more profound and more complex.

UNDP report last year. There is a new focus to offer disaggregated data on a range of issues including violence against women and women in power. There is an exceedingly large number of countries who do not report by sex.

Seventy per cent of the world’s 1.2 billion poor people are women.

Across the Pacific region, we find that gender imbalances and inequalities are seen across societies. Women are hit harder by poverty.

Last figures I saw was that the average representation of women across the Pacific was 5.5% which is far below global targets of 30%.

What will it cost to take these interventions?

We need to have mobilisation of stakeholders. If more women have better access to education and health care there is more possibility for more women to have better access to opportunities.

Julie Ballington, Programme Officer for the Inter Parliamentary Union.

Women are making a difference by their mere presence. While steady, progress is slow. If the current rate of increase continues the global target for 30% women in parliaments will not be reached until 2025 and parity will not be reached until 2040.

Pacific is up 7.6% over the last six months. The highest percent rate is in fact the Pacific over the last 10 years and is in fact contributable to developments in New Zealand and Australia.

Excluding New Zealand and Australia the Pacific rate of increase drops to 3.5% which indeed is the lowest in the world.

Most of the ministerial appointments were so called soft portfolios including women, youth and community affairs.

Jon Fraenkel, Senior Research Fellow, Pacific Institute of Advanced Studies in Development & Governance (PIAS-DG), USP, Suva:

We’ve got data sets from PNG, Solomons, Vanuatu, Marshall Islands and just now the Cook Islands. Data doesn’t address all the issues. There are qualitative issues as well.

One of the difficulties is that it’s often very difficult to tell the gender of a member of parliament from the names in that people in America and Europe go by very common names but that in the Pacific there are men who go by the name of a woman and women who go by the name of a man!

French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Guam and Wallis and Futuna form the top four according to regional ranking.  

Tonga has moved up out of the “dirty half dozen” that they were once called.

It’s not just enough women getting elected but also not enough women standing for election.

Looking at it historically, the Solomons, for example, has seen exponential growth in the number of candidates. But the 50 seat parliament is all male. On Tuesday the all male parliament chose its all male government. And one of the consequences was an all male crowd who were protesting against corruption and holding up a placard which said have you signed your pledge against corruption.

Vanuatu: only 9 candidates were women with 227 men in 2004.

One of the conclusions is that you need to reach a kind of threshold – Julie Ballington said critical mass – for women to start making an impact, that you can’t rely on electoral system changes alone.

Francesca Semoso, Deputy Speaker, Member of Parliament, Bougainville. Let’s not hide anything. We can blame the men but something is wrong somewhere. Is it the women? Is it the men? Or is it the polling system? We have to do it the Pacific way. It’s got to start with us. French Polynesia is leading, what’s wrong with us here?

We have to change our attitude about how we regard other women. Forget about how many other marriages she’s gone through. Or what she wears. We want more women in high parliamentary positions and decision making. I don’t believe it’s the men who are the problem. I think it’s the women working through the men. Regardless of religion, education, it’s the attitude to go into parliament and represent the underprivileged. Forget it if you’ve got a PHD, you’ve got to come down to the people. Honesty has to prevail here, women.

That’s the reason why I travelled half way around the Pacific. To learn from you and what your experience is. The world is changing. I don’t want to deal with what was 20 years ago, I want to move ahead. One woman in PNG? Three women in Solomons? Next time we go to the United Nations I want to say that women have woken up!

Maire Bopp Dupont: Why Wallis and Futuna are not included in the legal requirement for equal participation by women?

Mrs Estelle Lakalaka, Déléguée aux Droits des femmes et à l’égalité : In 1961, when France gave the Wallis and Futuna islands overseas territory status the relevant act was applied without there really being any preparation for our community so I could say this was imposed to some extent.

But we have drawn benefits from it and learnt to live with it and there are some disadvantages to the status that we have. Because the community wasn’t very well informed, even though the women did have the opportunity to stand for election to the Wallis and Futuna assembly but because we weren’t really prepared the women didn’t really dare to see their names on the list of candidates, until 1997.

I was the first women to put their name forward and this was the second or third legislature. One of my brothers in law needed six people to put his party on the list and I volunteered my name and I think that was a starting point. When I said I was in agreement I must say that I knew nothing about politics but five years on I was appointed as the first women territorial council and the members were the three kings. From that moment on with assistance from the SPC women’s bureau I then began to understand the situation and the role that I had to play. Women had to act because we were very dependent on French aid from 1986 onwards with the inception of the Territorial Women’s Council in French Polynesia I felt actively encouraged to get involved.

This is due to two factors was that it was directly implemented without real preparation so we weren’t sure how to cope with that but did give us improved representation because we have now three members on the territorial but only have three because of a lack of awareness and lack of financial support. We don’t have any major difficulties with gender parity but there is a lack of information.

Kerry Flanagan, Executive Director, Australian Government Office for Women: most political systems in the Pacific do not have compulsory voting and that might be one thing we can look at to improve participation?
Jon Fraenkel: We know that voter turnout is very, very high and that the turnout by women is the same and that they participate very, very strongly.

Julie Ballington: I take the point about the importance of women really having to make an effort. However power is currently in the hands of men. So unless we work in partnership with men there is very little that can be done. In terms of the gender gap in voting is that worldwide that voting data is not desegregated by gender – less than 10 countries in the world. Previously less women used to vote than men but now we’re seeing an inversion – more women are turning out.

Hon Dame Carol: I think we’ve got to start looking at the Pacific reality. We have a society with social dynamics based on family relationships and that is very strong throughout the Pacific. Strong cultural economy based on giving and reciprocity and yet when we get into power we have a situation where you are working in a way quite alien to those cultural values. It’s going to be very difficult.

We have to accept the fact … sorry, we don’t have to accept the fact that there is a lot of gender work that is being done but that there is a lot of institutional resistance, not even political resistance. How can we massage this system we are part of and make it work? Economic independence of women is also very important. I didn’t see much reference to the informal sector. I get fed up with trying to get something through and then I use the power of the big boys which is what I term derivative power and get them working behind the scenes. Our traditional power is something that women once had but have lost. We have to learn to be very strategic and yet not compromise ourselves too much as women in power in politics. I find it’s a very difficult road to walk.

I know that if I was in an African meeting women would be shouting at me to never accept derivative power and I hope that there will be women from the Pacific shouting at me but sometimes we have to accept power as it is and how to use it.

Mrs Beta Tewareka Tentoa: Power struggle in a way that very often women are not very well prepared for it and we’re scared to go into it and unless there is provision there in place to help and assist women to get in there. If it’s all dependent on how strong, good, popular you are I think that is most often where women will lose out.

Jon Fraenkel: Similar issues came up from Solomons and the extent of money politics – do you fight a clean campaign or do you get into campaign that causes difficulty? A lot of the women don’t want to get involved in the same way. Once a critical mass of women get into parliament they can change the way things are done.

Hon Vaaiga Tukuitonga: When we had our first legislative assembly in 1965 they had three women members elected. Women’s organisations have been set up since 1960 and in the many years since then we can see we made an impact in the beginning but we haven’t progressed very much over time.

In all the Pacific countries where there are councils of women we need to strengthen and raise the awareness of the place of women in politics in relation to councils of women at the local level. Even though some interest had been raised its still not enough to help the women to think about supporting other women. I think traditionally they are still very much in supporting the men folk because that is what they are used to.

Hon. Nanaia Mahuta: I would like to question our awareness of invisible networks. The Pacific Way is a way that draws on our strengths and that is our families. There are only two women Maori MPs that represent the Maori electorates and that we are quite reliant on the community leaders most of which are women. Have we really assessed the strength of that network in securing representation in parliament? Have we got an idea of how other women in the Pacific in harnessing that power. A comment that I would like to make is that do we have an idea of how far we want to challenging things whether it is gender or religious based because that is what we have to do.

Hon. Dame Carol: I agree with this last point and that the key to cracking the future is recognising the role of the NGOs. Competition for the donor dollar can also divide the women’s representation in that we have some excellent women’s groups but no women’s movement.

Hon. Lepolo Taunisila: I want to ask women in parliament what have they done in the past to discourage people from voting for them? That they might not have done anything to influence the government to change things for them? That may be why more women have not voted for women because they have not done enough to change things. I’m doubting now whether we really have any more women models in the Pacific to really encourage women into parliament.