Do no harm: supporting Pacific women leaders
Source: Devpolicy
The Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, last month committed to a revitalised gender equality declaration. This declaration, spearheaded by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, was subject to extensive consultation across the region. The first of its seven priority areas is “political leadership and regionalism”, in which leaders have committed to accelerated actions to strengthen the participation of women and girls in all their diversity “at all levels of leadership and decision-making”.
In various ways, women’s political leadership in the Pacific has changed over the last ten years. In 2023, women were represented in the parliament of every national jurisdiction in the region for the first time. Before then, no woman had ever been elected to the legislature of the Federated States of Micronesia. In 2021, the region saw its first female head of government, Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa, elected in Samoa. This followed the region’s first female head of state, Hilda Heine, in the Republic of the Marshall Islands in 2016. Women have held diverse executive portfolios in office, serving as deputy prime minister and leader of the opposition, and as ministers for foreign affairs, education, home affairs and justice, to name a few.
Click here to read the full article published by Devpolicy on 15 December 2023.
The Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, last month committed to a revitalised gender equality declaration. This declaration, spearheaded by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, was subject to extensive consultation across the region. The first of its seven priority areas is “political leadership and regionalism”, in which leaders have committed to accelerated actions to strengthen the participation of women and girls in all their diversity “at all levels of leadership and decision-making”.
In various ways, women’s political leadership in the Pacific has changed over the last ten years. In 2023, women were represented in the parliament of every national jurisdiction in the region for the first time. Before then, no woman had ever been elected to the legislature of the Federated States of Micronesia. In 2021, the region saw its first female head of government, Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa, elected in Samoa. This followed the region’s first female head of state, Hilda Heine, in the Republic of the Marshall Islands in 2016. Women have held diverse executive portfolios in office, serving as deputy prime minister and leader of the opposition, and as ministers for foreign affairs, education, home affairs and justice, to name a few.
Click here to read the full article published by Devpolicy on 15 December 2023.