Transcript
FAY VOLATABU: If you look at 10 percent for starters or five out of the 50 and they could either increase the number of parliamentarians to another five for women because I know that most would not agree with giving away five just like that to women. So a good way of doing that is like Bougainville had done, where they put in a number of women to become parliamentarians.
KORO VAKA'UTA: And how long would you hope to have those temporary special measures in place?
FV: Well we would have it as special measures until the number becomes 50 percent. Right now the Pacific Plan of Action and the Ministry Women in Fiji is saying we want 30 percent of women. But what I am saying is okay you want 30 percent of women then ensure that there is 30 percent of women in parliament by making it much more easier for them to be elected in parliament. I know the political parties are doing their part and we are trying to start the campaign to get members of the public voting more women but it would be nice to have some legal [backing] for the issue to and that is by having special measures in place. Note the word we have deleted is temporary. We don't want it to be temporary. We want it to be special measures all the way.
KV: What is it that do you think has stopped more women getting into parliament?
FV: Mainly the attitude of people. We did a project for the last three years and we realised that women were not visible enough. They were not familiar enough for people to vote so that is why our campaign now from the National Council of Women is to try and make women more visible in the media so that when it comes time for political parties to start looking for candidates, they approach women that are already visible in the public eye because sometimes that is one of the biggest issues. Women are modest and then because of their cultural constraints they feel that let the man go to the front.
KV: I understand there is a similar call in Tonga for special measures for women seats and interestingly enough they recently did a survey which showed that actually women themselves were not backing women candidates. Is that another attitudinal change that needs to happen, women believing in themselves?
FV: Yes because we also did indirect research when we were doing our projects. We'd put out questionnaires for people to answer and one of the things that came back was that when we asked them, did you vote for a woman candidate or a male candidate and unfortunately most of them said a male candidate. That's why we are trying to have this new campaign. One of the issues they said was that there were not enough women that were visible enough in the media.
KV: And what is response been to your call to have this campaign?
FV: This whole discussion started when it was stated that in government, they did not believe in temporary special measures, the minister of women, that was their stance. We launched a campaign called Celebrating Women’s Role in Leadership and in this campaign we are using music, art, videos as well as the traditional forms of training and workshops. So we are hoping that this time around we will get more women to be visible, not just be educated, they have to be visible too.
