Stepping up the pace to 2010

Julie Middleton
It was a powerful analogy. As international judge and former New Zealand Governor General Dame Silvia Cartwright opened the 10th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women, she asked a question.

If Pacific countries discovered oil, “would they let it seep away without recovering it for the benefit of the whole community?

“The same is true of developing and using women’s potential,” continued Cartwright, whose lawyerly poise belies a straight-talking personality.

“If we let that seep away through inertia, lack of leadership, or adherence to dated traditional practices, we risk the good of the whole community.”

Cartwright, the first female judge in both New Zealand’s upper and lower courts and long-time women’s rights advocate, was speaking in front of more than 140 Pacific ministers, civil servants and representatives of civil society, development and donor bodies.

They had gathered at SPC’s Noumea headquarters for the opening of the 10th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women (“the Triennial”), a four-day event which ran from May 27-31.

The recommendations of that meeting fed directly into the Third Ministers Meeting on Women on June 1.

It was the biggest women’s meeting ever held at SPC. All of the technical assistance agency’s 26 member states were there—except remote Pitcairn Islands, population 57—as well as well-known names and institutions in Pacific development.

Another talk-shop? True, negotiating action at a regional level requires a fair amount of discussion.

But this was not a conference to lament women’s lack of progress—everyone present knew where and why Pacific women were being held back. It was a practical conference suggesting tools for action.

The overall theme was Pacific Women, Pacific Plan: Stepping Up the Pace to 2010.   The plan mentioned is the Revised Pacific Platform for Action on Advancement of Women and Gender Equality 2005-2015, a blueprint agreed to by Pacific ministers in 1993 and revised in 2004.

And the reference to 2010? That’s a one of the stocktake years for the anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals, agreed to by most of the world’s political leaders in 2000.

The meeting also encouraged reflection on the Pacific Plan, the 2005 blueprint for regional cooperation and growth, in which gender equality is a central thread.

Linda Petersen, manager of SPC’s Human Development Programme, explains the theme: “Despite the fact that governments, regional decision-makers and development partners have acknowledged the role and contribution of women to Pacific development, too many are not backing this up with action.

“We have to step up the pace—the statistics across the region compared with other parts of the world show that we are way behind in every yardstick to do with women’s equality. This holds back development overall.”
Presentations to the triennial outlined ways to get that action going, among them:

• The importance of “mainstreaming” gender issues which simply means assessing likely impacts on both men and women when planning any national policy, strategy or project,   which means that steps can be taken to ensure specific needs of both men and women are considered and neither sex is overlooked or marginalised.
• The need for governments to commit to “gender budgeting”—that is, setting aside the finance to undertake work towards equality;
• Vanuatu-based statistician Kim Robertson pointing out that without detailed statistics, the true status of women remains obscure. “At the moment, all of the national statistical systems are reporting on the whole pie, not the two halves. We need to be able to show whether these two halves are equal.”
• Robyn Drysdale, an SPC behaviour change communication specialist, told the conference that women were most at risk of contracting HIV from the people they trust most—their husbands. The shock statistic: heterosexual sex accounted for 90.7 percent of all HIV cases recorded in the Pacific region up to December 2005.
• Anna Padarath of the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, said leaders of the women’s movement had to share power with their younger sisters. “It’s something that many young women feel the movement is not doing very well at the moment. The transferring of leadership roles across generation is part of creating the equitable participatory, just world that we want.” She had reassuring words: “Don’t worry. You can trust us, because you’ve taught us well.”
• Cartwright again, telling the opening event that governments which took action gave women hope that things could change. “We feel we have been heard, and that [equality] is not a private battle fought one-by-one by lonely, desperate women.”
• French researchers Stephanie Guyon and Isabelle Rettig outlining their research, both qualitative and quantitative, into the impact of France’s year 2000 political parity law, which demands equal numbers of men and women on party lists. The law had not only increased the numbers of women in decision-making posts, but had offered encouragement that was lacking before.
• Deschen Tsering, of the Global Fund for Women, urging grassroots women’s projects to apply for funding: Pacific countries represented just five percent of the amount given in the Asia-Pacific region, and she was keen to see an increase.  

It is hard to sum up in 1000 words four days of discussion, presentations, workshops and informal networking on issues as wide-ranging as women and mass media, building a women’s movement, research for advocacy, disability, violence, overcoming cultural barriers to gender equality, women in agriculture and forestry.
It was intense but it was practical—and it was fun.

The four days boiled down to a series of recommendations that the meeting of ministers discussed and refined.  

The 21-strong ministerial meeting came up with a five-page document that stated, among other things, that the improvement of the status of women required the partnership of men and boys, and that governments had to allocate money and staff to national gender equality programmes.

Among the ministers’ other resolutions was ensuring the participation of marginalised groups of women, such as young women and those with disability; the need to boost national statistics offices so they could collect better statistics on the status of women; and acknowledgement of the contributions of the women’s movement and non-government organisations in building the social fabric of Pacific societies.

Solomon Islands minister Augustine Taneko reminded his peers that words without action were a waste of time.

“We can say much, but the implementation is very, very important.”

Jimmie Rodgers, SPC’s Director-General, added that the ministers’ resolutions “emphasised a lot more accountability...the proof of the pudding,” he added, “is in the implementation.”

The ministerial meeting also agreed on a process to try and get a Pacific expert onto the high-powered United Nations committee that oversees the Convention for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women.

There is no Pacific representation on the 23-member committee of “independent experts” that monitors countries’ compliance with CEDAW; individual Pacific nations, such as Samoa, have tried and failed.

Ministers decided that all SPC member countries would back one quality candidate for CEDAW elections in either 2008 or 2010, with SPC coordinating.

The week was considered to have been “very fruitful” (PNG’s Joseph Klapat, head of its Department of Community Development) and “a highly educational experience” (Ngai Tupa, Cook Is Parliamentarian.)  

Telo Taitague, Guam’s women’s affairs minister, said that the meeting had strengthened her belief that “women must channel their energies and abilities into empowering others. We must teach that empowerment is a two-step process: as we climb, we must also lift.”

No dates have been set for the next Triennial, but ministers came up with possible themes, including how to engage men and boys in creating a world in which everyone enjoys the same opportunities.

All work and a little bit of play It wasn’t all work—one evening of the Triennial was dedicated to a Pacific Pageant, a parade by delegates of Pacific clothing both traditional, ceremonial and modern. Delegates—men and women—had been encouraged to bring and model outfits. And they did, to much laughter, discovering that modelling isn’t as easy as it looks. The clothing displayed on a catwalk in SPC’s garden ranged from neck-to-ankle lacy cotton dresses favoured by early missionaries’ wives in Tahiti, to sexy modern numbers made creatively-cut Fijian tapa cloth. It was a colourful and interesting spectacle, captured by local television for broadcast the next day. The photos probably tell the story best.

• Julie Middleton, Advocacy and Communications Officer, Human Development Programme at SPC.