Transcript
KERRYN BAKER: Not necessarily. And I think especially if we're talking about national governments, there is a bit of a disconnect there. People in the village don't necessarily know what's happening in the national parliament. So, that there are no women in there is not necessarily a big concern for the general public. But there are movements, there was a big campaign before the last Papua New Guinea election (2012) to get more women in politics; and Samoa, they introduced that gender quota, which is controversial but does have some support and has increased the number of women in politics. So there are movements. We see in Vanuatu, they've introduced gender quotas for women in politics at the municipal level; they're talking about introducing them at the provincial and even at the national levels, so it has sparked conversations. but there is still some resistance to the idea of women's representation but, you know, that's not everyone.
JOHNNY BLADES: Of course in elections, women seem to be disadvantaged at every point of the process in the Pacific, don't they?
KB: Yeah it is very hard to get elected as a woman in many parts of the Pacific. But in general women candidates don't seem to do very well, but again, that's not everywhere. If you look at Samoa for example., only about 15% of the candidates that ran in this year's election were women. But the women who did run tended to do quite well. One in three got over 20% of the vote. So that shows that not only are women candidates competitive but that people are actually prepared to vote for women. So that's a really positive sign.
JB: Because to win elections in many of these countries - and I suppose really all around the world - it seems like you need a lot of money. And if it's a kind of voter bribery system, females are sort of disadvantaged form the outset in that respect, aren't they, in a society like Papua New Guinea's for instance?
KB: Yeah, so the extent to which money politics plays a role in elections varies quite significantly throughout the region. But yeah to take somewhere like PNG, it costs a lot to contest an election Even if you aren't playing money politics, it's still a very expensive process. Women are less likely to be engaged in the formal economy. Where they are, they tend to earn less money than men. So already, you're starting out kind of less economically empowered than your male counterparts, then that becomes even more of an issue if you decide to get involved in politics.
JB: And do you think the reserved seats approach can work, or does work?
KB: It's always controversial to introduce reserved seats. It always comes with questions about whether it's the fairest system on merit, whether the women who come in under reserved seats will be respected as much as their male counterparts. And those are definitely issues to consider. But you know, from what we see around the world, there's no country who has got to 50 or even 40% without some form of special measures for women. It's just very hard to get to those high levels of women representation without introducing not necessarily reserved seats but some form of quota. So especially if you're looking at situations where there's none, or one or two women in parliament, sometimes reserved seats might be the answer, just to get more women in, just to get people used to the idea of having women in politics so that - even if you take those systems away - women will have a better chance of getting elected in the same process as men.
JB: Coming out of the recent State of the Pacific conference when this was the focus of some of the panel discussions, what were some of the main challenges recognised, coming out of that?
KB: So, looking beyond quotas, looking at how to support women candidates in countries that don't have these special measures. That's a really key issue: trying to find ways to support women in terms of maybe innovative financing of their campaigns, helping with political mapping to get that kind of edge. Those are all issues, and how development partners might be able to support that, that's a key challenge. I think in terms of the... if you look at reserved seats, special measures, I think one of the kay challenges is looking beyond those classic models. And I think that's something that Samoa has done really well. They've got a kind of safety net system which means that everyone competes the same way in the election. There's a base line of women's representation of five MPs (the fono nominally has 50 seats) and if less than 5 get elected then they bring in additional members. So it's not women competing against each other for set, reserved seats. They're competing against men in the same electoral competition. But the quota just means that, in the event that less than 5 get elected, that there's an additional mechanism just to make sure you've got that 10% level of representation. So looking at how that might possibly be a model for other countries in the region, I think that's really important too.
