Cooks women look back at 50 years of advancement

Transcript

Leading womens groups in the Cook Islands are to meet in March to celebrate 50 years of self-government.

Vaine Wichman of the National Council of Women is hosting a conference along with the Ministry of Internal Affairs to celebrate 50 years of self-government.

Ms Wichman told Koro Vaka'uta they will publish a paper at the conference that presents the merits and work of 50 women who have been pioneers, trailblazers or achievers.

VAINE WICHMAN:  Now they're not necessarily gonna be those ones we see in the newspaper or those who have the verbal expertise to tell their stories.  It will also be some of our great-grandmothers who by their vision took the first vote in 1964 that set us on the road to self-government.  Some of them will be reflected in some of our young girls who home-grown, home-born with the least resources in the world are now international civil servants.  The diversity is what we have had to weigh in.  Who comes to mind?  Straight away I think of my grandmother.  One of that cadre of women who no education, didn't know how to write but knew how to keep their families together and sew tivaevae.  She told me a long time ago, the reason she voted for self-government was because she believed her children could look after this country in the future and she wasn't wrong.  Who comes to mind later on in life?  Dame Makea Karika Margaret Ariki, some of the traditional leaders.  Who comes to mind as we go forward in the Cook Islands?  I'm looking at the likes of our own Jeannie the young woman in the technology sector, Dr Lara Manarangi-Trott in the regional tuna fisheries sector.  Cook Islands home-grown.

KORO VAKA'UTA:  As we look back on the 50 years, looking at the progression of women in society, has there been good progress made over 50 years in terms of womens' rights and equality in the Cook Islands?  

VW:  On a scale of 1-10, 10 being very good and regionally comparing the Cook Islands, we are up there at seven.  Cook Island women have progressively asserted themselves, even against all odds but there are still a lot of spaces that need to be filled in.  One in three women are still subjected in the Cook Islands to some form of domestic violence.  Still a long way to go.  Of course our women's health has gone up a few stages but Cook Islands women are a group of women that never are complacent.  There still has to be a better way. Here I talk about the last vestige in terms of our island decision-making council chambers and our national parliament. 50 years ago there was one woman. 50 years later there's three women.  Some things are not changing.  I remember working in the outer islands and we put them through a set of tasks and one of them was we had a women's council group, we have a men's council group and we had a men and women's council group.  Then we asked them to come back and show their findings.  The women's group came and they had everything under the sun they wanted to do.  Just like women.  Then the men gave their findings, they had one or two bulldozers to do all the hard work but it was the men and women's group which returned a plan that was so practical.  What do we have today in parliament?  What do we have today in the island councils?