‘This is key to a prosperous Pacific’

Shobhna Decloitre





Increasing women’s participation in parlia-ment is one way of improving women’s status in the society. And this is key to a healthy, happy and prosperous Pacific, according to Winnie Byayima.
Byanyima, who hails from Uganda, is the Director of the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Gender Team. She was in Fiji last month.
In an interview, she told the magazine that as a region that includes four of the eight countries in the world that have no women in parliament, the Pacific has to address the challenge of low women’s representation as a priority.
While the Pacific has made progress in many areas in addressing the gaps between men and women, women in decision-making positions is an area where the region has lagged behind.
“The Pacific region has not done very well compared to other regions on women in decision making.
“The indicator that is normally tracked is women in parliament.  Unfortunately, the Pacific region has not made a lot of progress on increasing women’s participation in parliament.
“In many regions where the numbers of women in parliament have increased substantially, it has been through the use of special measures to bring women in to politics, either through quotas, political party quotas, or special reserved seats that are provided through law under the constitution,” said Byanyima, who was elected three times to the Uganda legislature and was a founder of the assembly’s women’s caucus.
“The measures for affirmative action for women in politics are known. It takes political will to implement them.”
Another challenge Pacific women face is violence against them.
“The level of violence against women in the region is high and this is also true about many other regions.”
She said there were tested ways of addressing violence against women.
“Economic empowerment of women has been proven to be a particularly important way to prevent violence against women. When women are empowered economically, they are able to negotiate safe relations with their male partners and to walk away from violent relationships.”
Reflecting on the vulnerability of the Pacific region to natural disasters and climate related risks, Byanyima said the Pacific region had the highest incidence of disasters in the whole world.
“Some of these small islands are indeed facing the threat of disappearing in a changing climate so addressing the issues of men and women to prevent disasters and when disasters strike is very important.
“We are seeing different impacts on men and women. We are seeing higher levels of vulnerability amongst poor women than even poor men in the same communities.”
Citing evidence gathered in a study by the London School of Economics that covered disasters in 144 counties, Byanyima said the study showed that for every one man that dies in a natural disaster, four women perish.
“The study found that when women’s rights are not protected, more women than men die in disasters. There is a relationship between women’s rights and being affected by disasters.
“The study also found that in societies where women and men enjoy equal rights, disasters will kill the same number of men and women. Having rights reduced vulnerability to disasters.”
She discussed the example of the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and said that it did not impact fishermen who were at sea as much as it affected women who were waiting for vessels on shore for processing and marketing of that fish.
“This tells you a story not about women being weaker physically but about the way men and women share roles in society and their levels of access to information resources. 
“Sometimes escaping means that you need some money to move, it also reflects limited mobility on the part of women and more mobility on the part of men.
“So it really is a statement about the status of women in society; their higher vulnerability is related to their lower status, so improving their status of generally will make them less vulnerable to climate risks.