The Pacific has seen 15 Triennial Conferences of Pacific Women, eight Pacific Ministers for Women meetings, and 30 years of the Pacific Platform for Action on Gender Equality and Women’s Human Rights, but as the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting (PIFLM) wrapped up in Tonga in August, questions were being asked about how much of the outcomes from these meetings were brought to the Forum Leaders table for discussion this year.
An observer at a closed plenary session for the 53rd PIFLM, Head of the Pacific for Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Shiva Gounden, shared his insights: “Gender was not discussed much at all; the Republic of the Marshall Islands President, Hilde Heine, was the only leader who spoke very strongly about the inclusion of gender in terms of any of the Pacific issues that have been addressed or will be addressed at this Pacific Islands Forum, especially climate change. Aside from her, nothing at all from the other leaders.
“And that is pretty much the only time I heard gender in the Forum so far,” Gounden told Islands Business during the Forum meeting.
Gender in the Pacific has been an ongoing topic of discussion for 30 years now. Whether it is women in leadership or the treatment of women and girls, it is clear that even though there has been progress, it is moving very slowly.
The Pacific Community’s (SPC) Gender Statistics in the Pacific dashboard indicates that while women in the Pacific hold 56 percent of managerial positions, the same cannot be said when it comes to women in leadership positions. Aside from French Polynesia and New Caledonia going over the 50 percent threshold, the rest of the Pacific Islands are well below the figure.
An August 2024 report titled, ‘Women are Underfunded in the Pacific Islands’ by Lowy Institute research fellow Jessica Collins, states that “right across the Pacific Island region, women are on the back foot; the Pacific Islands has the lowest level of female political representation in the world”.
Women in politics in the Pacific
In Tonga, the proportion of seats held by women in the national parliament is 7 percent. Tonga National University lecturer, Nanise Fifita raises the question, “What is wrong with us women?
“We have 59 percent more women in Tonga than men, so what’s wrong with women being represented in Parliament? The question is, how can we persuade and empower women to cast their votes in the House? What is stopping us? To me, I think the underlying issue stopping women from voting is our competitive human nature of not embracing someone’s achievement,” Fifita says.
The other factor is that “when people look at a successful woman who is also academically qualified, they will not vote for them, and I don’t understand why. We have our women now in CEO positions and in high positions, so why can’t we vote for our women in Parliament?”.
There was also a noticeable absence of gender issues from the official side events for 53rd PIFLM, and Tongan activist and founder of the Women’s Crisis Centre in Tonga, Ofa Ki Levuka Guttenbeil, noticed.
A former journalist turned women’s activist, Guttenbeil said: “Have you noticed that there aren’t any gender side events?
“It is shocking to me that we send Ministers to these events that are meant to improve and empower Ministers to implement activities or policies on the ground, but there are no changes; we need to hold them accountable,” she said.
She also commented on the revised Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration and the yearly PIFLM meeting.
Said Guttenbeil: “I feel we always do reviews, go around the Pacific, and we get people’s feedback and comments, but there is always something missing because it has been more than 30 years and we have yet to see any accelerated progress towards gender, and the problem is that the people do not know what the leaders are committing to.”
There clearly is a need to bridge the gap between regional commitments and what is happening on the ground.
According to Guttenbeil, women in Tonga are searching for opportunities in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, as they have limited options available to them.
“Our women are looking elsewhere, and if Tonga and our leaders do not look into giving our women more opportunities, they will take their talent and contribute to the economy overseas, so I really hope that our leaders can marry the commitments in the regional level, down to the national and local level, and also do more to help motivate women in leadership,” Guttenbeil says.
The question of having more women representation in Parliament was also posed to the Tongan Prime Minister, Hu’akavemeiliku Siaosi Sovaleni.
“We believe that women should be represented. There were a lot of candidates in the last election, and we are certainly going to try to encourage and provide resources for them to actually be better represented the next time around,” he told Islands Business.
The same question was posed to political parties in Fiji by Dialogue Fiji Executive Director, Nilesh Lal, when he asked if they could include 50% of women in their internal quota.
“They told us that there weren’t enough credible and popular women candidates for them to be able to field at least 50 percent of women in their party list,” Lal said.
Fiji’s Assistant Minister for Women, Children, and Social Protection, Sashi Kiran, reflected on her journey as a woman entering politics in Fiji at a panel discussion on ‘Breaking Barriers: Increasing Female Participation in Local Government Elections in Fiji’, hosted by Dialogue Fiji in August.
Kiran said: “When I joined parliament two years ago, one of the things that struck me was five women out of 55 in Parliament; it immediately impacted me that when we are talking in either the standing committees, while we were looking at different legislation, or in Parliament, the perspective of women is very limited.
“And we know that to make any good legislation, it is important to have viewpoints from different areas, different ethnic groups, age group, gender, and geography to ensure that different aspects of needs are looked at in any legislation that we make,” she said.
Kiran quickly found out after from her visits around the country and speaking to women from different backgrounds and across managerial positions that women find themselves lacking when it comes to running for elections.
According to Kiran, whether it be a group of 50 or 200 women she is in dialogue with, when it comes to the possibility of seeing themselves joining politics, only two or none at all raise their hands. Often, women in managerial positions do not see themselves as ready to enter politics.
“They didn’t feel they were prepared enough; they didn’t feel they were trained enough; they didn’t feel that they had the right emotional or mental support and mentorship,” Kiran said.
Kiran has suggested a program that can help prepare women for leadership positions in municipal elections.
Lal said: “This time around, we have gone back to them [political parties], and we have told them, ‘Look, the stakes are way lower; this is just the local government elections, and this can be a perfect training ground for us to train women and maybe later, for a subsequent career in national politics as well.’”
Dialogue Fiji is teaming up with stakeholders from Australia who have had years of training female candidates to increase their prospects for elections.
“So, we are working with them to essentially build the capacities of women, identifying a cohort of women, and recruiting these cohorts of women in a very systematic way,” he says. “We are also recruiting people through an open and inclusive mechanism to afford everybody the chance to be part of that cohort.”
Is enough being done?
While donors like Australia have been pumping money into projects aimed at empowering Pacific women, aid spending in the Pacific Islands, primarily on women, is below the global average.
In her report, Collins states that “total official development finance (ODF) spent on gender equality by all donors between 2008 and 2021, captured by the Pacific Aid Map, was US$13 billion, or 30% of all aid delivered to the Pacific. This seems like a big investment but lift the hood and the details suggest otherwise.
“Aid where gender equality was the primary objective of the investment (without which the project would not go ahead—also known as a principal investment) represented on average only 3% of the total ODF disbursed across the period. These “principal” investments fell below the global average of 4%, as reported to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),” Collins said.
What is clear is that it will require more than money to be able to influence the patriarchal mindset of Pacific people.
Said Guttenbeil: “If we want change, then we need to start from primary school; we need to raise awareness and empower not only our women but our girls that they can be leaders, and train our boys to be respectful to girls and women; we need a complete change in mindset, that is the only way forward, and it needs to start at home.”
Fifita added that men are not the only ones whose mindsets need changing; women also need to change their mindsets and start celebrating other women instead of viewing them as competition.
“There are many women in Tonga compared to men, so if men are still voted in more than women, then it is obvious that we are voting them in. If we want to change mindsets, let us start with us women at home by voting for our women,” said Fifita.
On a regional level, the 15th Triennial Conference for Pacific Women and the 8th meeting of Pacific Ministers for Women have proposed three priority areas and actions on (1) the health of women and girls, (2) gender-responsive climate justice, and (3) the prevention of gender-based violence.
While the Women Triennial Conference called on regional agencies, members of governments, and stakeholders to work in partnership to ensure that the three priority areas are supported, the 53rd PIFLM Final Communique made no mention of gender issues. That raised questions about when Pacific leaders will address gender equality as a standalone issue without it being overshadowed by an overarching theme.
Pacific Islands Forum Director for Governance and Engagement, Sione Tekiteki, told Islands Business that “all issues and agenda items that go up to leaders are assessed through the gender lens by the social policy team to ensure that it is mainstreamed throughout all the issues that we are doing.
“But the fact that it is always on the agenda and is discussed is a good thing,” Tekiteki said.
