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National Elections and Women Candidates in Solomon Islands: Results from the People’s Survey

A striking feature of elected governments in Solomon Islands is the general scarcity of women. Although some community elders are women and women have achieved senior positions in the public service and civil society, very few women have been elected to provincial governments and only one has ever won a seat in the national Parliament. Prior to the 2006 and 2010 national elections, various donors and local organizations made substantial efforts to educate communities in the concept of democracy, civic rights and the importance of voting independently for the candidates most likely to provide good governance (Alasia, 2008: 119-126; Transparency International, 2010). They also helped to encourage, organise and support women candidates and in the 2010 election women contested 21 of the 50 seats. Despite this, women candidates received only 4% of the vote in the 21 seats they contested. Not a single woman won office or even came close to receiving most votes in the seats they contested. The majority of women candidates were among the least successful.

This paper explores data on Solomon Islanders’ perceptions of the role of an elected Member of Parliament (MP), their experience of elections and their perceptions of women as leaders. The data are drawn from the People’s Survey (RAMSI, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010), which has been conducted annually since 2007 to inform evaluations of The Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) and to provide feedback to the Solomon Islands Government and the community.

Alternative Pathways for Women into Politics (presentation)

This powerpoint presentation was given during the Regional Conference on Women's Political Participation: Charting a Path for Political Equality in Asia, organized by UNDP and the National Committee on Gender Equality of Mongolia. Ms. Rabindranath explored avenues that women can take to get into politics, in addition to traditional methods, including:

  • Community engagement
  • Peace building and nation building
  • Exposure to democratic principles
  • Decentralization
  • Social movements and student activism
  • Male role models

The presentation is available for download in English and Mongolian.

The Role of National Mechanisms in Promoting Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women: Turkey Experience

The Beijing Platform for Action (1995) continues to point out that the main task of national women's machineries (NWMs) is to support government wide mainstreaming of a gender equality perspective in all policy areas. (para. 201) They should perform policy analysis, undertake advocacy, communication, coordination and monitoring of implementation, data gathering. It should influence policy and formulate and review legislation. It should report to legislative bodies on the progress of efforts taking into account the implementation of the Platform for Action, encourage and promote the active involvement of the broad and diverse range of institutional actors in the public, private and voluntary sectors to work for equality between women and men and promote and establish cooperative relationships with relevant branches of government, centers for women’s studies, and research, academic and educational institutions, the private sector, the media, the NGOs, especially women’s NGOs and all other actors of civil society. It should further establish links with national, regional and international bodies dealing with the advancement of women, provide training and advisory assistance to government agencies to mainstream gender policy.

The constraints NWMs face have been identified by many observers and can be summed up as the inability to perform the above tasks because of:

  • Marginalization in national government structures

  • Insufficient support from national political leadership

  • Dependence on donor funding and the accompanying implication that gender

    equality issues are a ‘foreign import’

  • Subjection to changing political fortunes

  • Unclear and weak mandates

  • Lack of adequate staff, expertise and data

  • Lack of sufficient resources

  • Insufficient understanding of gender equality and mainstreaming among

    government structures

  • Lack of legitimacy and support from women’s organizations

Gender and Institutions: Creating an Enabling Environment

Enhancing women's participation in development requires an "Enabling Environment”. What does an enabling environment look like? An enabling environment would presumably be favorable towards women's empowerment and it would need to be described and assessed at global, national and local levels. The actions and change strategies to create such an environment would be undertaken by international organizations, Governments, and civil society actors.

At the global level, an enabling environment has been created under the UN aegis, where women's networks have learned about lobbying and advocacy, come together to debate and promote their views, to negotiate with Government representatives and hold them accountable for global conventions and resolutions (Kardam, 2004). In many countries, women's movements have also successfully pressured Governments from below to change legal institutions, laws and policies.

Turkey's Response to the Global Gender Regime

Most would agree that a global gender equality regime has been established (for example CEDAW), but it is less clear how those global gender equality norms ‘travel’ to different localities and interact with local politics, cultural and religious norms. After all, without an understanding of how global norms are interpreted, received, redefined, we are mostly in the dark about the effectiveness of the global gender equality regime.

In this paper, I first investigate the nature of the global gender regime. This is because it is important to know how this regime came into being, who promoted it, what the contested issues are and the existing compliance mechanisms. Then, I turn to Turkey and explore its interactions with this global regime, making sure to pay special attention to its historical, political, religious and cultural context.

Assessment of National Women's Machineries in Turkey

With the new organizational law, the objectives and duties of the national women's machinery (NW)M have been updated and expanded to focus on building equality for women and men, and to move beyond the elimination of discrimination against women, to a framework for human rights, which are in this case, the protection and promotion of women’s human rights. The new law also provides for extra staff and creates gender expert positions. A new EC project under the 2005 Pre-membership FinancialAssistanceProgrammetitled“Expanding Gender Equality” aims to strengthen the capacity of the NWM itself, including training of staff members. The new organizational law also stipulates a new Advisory Council mandated to give policy advice to the Director, comprised of NWM officials, representatives of relevant government organizations and NGO leaders. This Council met in June 2006 and identified the need for the following issues to be addressed:

  • An overall gender policy with priorities accorded to women’s employment, education, overcoming violence against women, and women’s participation in politics.

  • Effective implementation of legal reforms for gender equality.

Political Finance Database

The International IDEA political finance database contains information on political finance control provisions in more than 175 countries around the world. That makes it the largest collection of such information.

The information in this database shows the use of different types of regulations in individual countries, but it can also be used to compare the prevalence of various provisions between countries and regions. It is our hope that this database can be used by all who are interested in how the role of money in politics is regulated, be they legislators, regulators, political party officials, civil society activists, journalists or concerned citizens.

Please note that this database deals exclusively with regulations of political finance, not with how such regulations are respected or enforced. As with many areas, the passing of a law does not automatically bring compliance. The world over, scandals concerning money and politics illustrate that laws are breached and loopholes utilized. In other situations, governments may abuse regulations to further their own goals. These facts do not negate the value of collecting the global political finance regulations, it simply means that we cannot assume that these provisions are adhered to or enforced in a manner we might anticipate. Without regulations, there is however nothing to adhere to or enforce; meaning that these provisions present the natural starting point for any study of money in politics.

The database answers 43 questions on political finance within four broad categories:

1. Bans and limits on private income

2. Public funding

3. Regulations of spending

4. Reporting, oversight and sanctions

For more information please visit International IDEA.

Women and political participation: Resolution adopted by the General Assembly

The General Assembly,

Reaffirming  the  obligations  of  all  States  to  promote  and  protect  human  rights and fundamental freedoms as stated in the Charter of the United Nations, and guided by the purposes and principles of human rights instruments,  

Reaffirming  also  the  Universal  Declaration  of  Human  Rights, which  states that  everyone  has  the  right  to  take  part  in  the  Government  of  his  or  her  country directly,  or  through  freely  chosen  representatives,  and  the  right  of  equal  access  to public service, 

Parliaments in Commonwealth Countries: Orientation for New Staff

Thank you for your interest in the Parliaments in Commonwealth Countries Module! While the course content will always be available on this website for all interested learners, the moderated course will bring learners from around the world together to discuss and share about parliament and the Commonwealth. This kind of interchange allows participants to learn not just the course content, but to familiarize yourselves with the content more dynamically, and to learn best practices from each other's experiences.

Course Description:

This course, equivalent to 4 days (32 hours) of classroom training, began March 9, 2009 and will last for approximately 5 weeks. It is not only an introduction to navigating the Commonwealth system, but is also an introduction to working within any parliamentary system. The participants will learn the ins and outs of the legislative process, the roles of the various parliamentary players, and parliamentary procedure. Topics covered include:

  • The development of the modern Commonwealth;
  • The Role of the Speaker;
  • Women in Parliament;
  • Introduction to Parliamentary Procedure;
  • The Role of the Opposition; and
  • Ministers, Members and Public Servants.

Registration will remain open for one more week, please register here if you are interested. If you would like to follow the material individually, you are free to read through the module at your leisure.

This course will be moderated by Raja Gomez. To learn more about him, please visit his bio here. Or if you would like to begin discussing the course content with Raja, you may post a message on the Discussion Forum here.

Already registered for the course? If so, please take a moment to introduce yourself on the Forum here! You may then begin to answer this week's questions after you have seen course lessons on the Workbook page here.

 

Browsing version: Click on the links below to explore the modules online.

Print version: Click on the PDF links below for print-quality files. To open the PDF pages you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader.

We suggest that you start by learning more About These Modules. You may also discuss all of the learning modules here.

 

 
Printable PDF Version Website HTML Version
Entire Module Entire Module
Unit 1 The Development of the Modern Commonwealth
Unit 2 The Role of the Speaker and Other Presiding Officers
Unit 3 Women in Parliament
Unit 4 Introduction to Parliamentary Procedure and Aspects of Debate
Unit 5 Legislation
Unit 6 Parliamentary Committees and the Scrutiny of the Executive
Unit 7 The Role of the Opposition
Unit 8 The Role of MPs and Parliamentary Staff
Unit 9 Parliament, Its Recordkeeping and the Media
Unit 10 Ministers, Members, Staff and Public Servants
Glossary Glossary
 

Parliamentary Strengthening Learning Program

The modules in Parliamentary Strengthening Learning Program series were developed for parliamentary staff around the world, but can be appreciated by learners of all kinds.

There have been two courses offered for a general parliamentary audience. They were:


November 21 - December 16 - Le Parlement au Budget en français

November 21 - December 16 - Parliaments and The Budget Process

We plan to offer a handful of other courses in the Winter and Spring. Please register for whichever course interests you and we will let you know when the course become available for moderated delivery. The courses are demand-driven, so if there is a great enough interest through the registration process, we are likely to offer it in the near future also.

You may contact Brooke Prater at parliamentarystrengthening@gmail.com with any further questions. We look forward to learning with you!