Experiences shared to boost Pacific women MP numbers

Transcript

MPs, parliamentary speakers and senior government officials from 13 Pacific countries have gathered in Port Moresby to learn how to boost women's political representation.

The Pacific still has the world's lowest rate of women in parliament, despite a commitment by regional leaders four years ago to gender equality.

The UN's Roy Trivedy trih-viddy says there are plenty of case studies in the region to learn from.

ROY TRIVEDY: The main thing is actually just to share the experience. What is it that is working, what are some of the difficulties, how do we start the increase of the percentage of women representatives in parliament. Because everybody realises that having 5.6 percent of legislators in the pacific region who are women, there are clearly things that are not working. Why is it that 50 percent of our population of all of these countries are women and yet only five percent of legislators, so clearly some things aren't working and we need to look at what can we do to change this.

SALLY ROUND: And what has been discussed so far? What are those barriers that some of these delegates are coming up with?

RT: Well a number of things were discussed but just to say Sally, when UNDP put this on our website earlier last week we received a lot of letters from just ordinary people. One for example from Hela province who said I am so pleased you are doing this, let me just outline two major things that I think hold back women. The first is the lack of tight security during the campaign period, during voting time and so on, and many women just do not feel safe to put their hands up and stand as candidates partly as a result of this issue of security. The second issue reason is candidates often use finance, they provide cash to people, often bribe particular groups of voters, and all of this makes it very, very difficult for women candidates to stand. One because many women of course working in the informal sector don't have large amounts of money, and two of course many would not want to. We also heard about the lack of funds available to women candidates, the fact that political parties the way they choose candidates often also stops women candidates from coming forward.

SR: It seems like this has been talked about for a very long time. And as you said four years ago the Pacific Island Forum leaders committed to a declaration which included temporary special measures. It would seem that you would need some of the decision makers in the room to actually hear what these women are saying. Are those people there?

RT: So we do have a number of senior parliamentarians and others, men and women actually. It's a discussion which may need more time. Ultimately everybody recognises that for parliaments, national institutions to really represent their people, they have got to represent all of their people. It leads to greater legitimacy of parliaments, it leads to more engagement by people in politics, and it ultimately leads to better outcomes and better policies.