By IPS Correspondents
SUVA, Mar 8 2007 (IPS)

While there is greater awareness about women’s issues in most South Pacific Island states, the serious lack of reliable data hamper the assessment of actual progress and the designing of effective policies. But the positive contribution of women in preventing conflict is widely acknowledged.

Taking stock of achievements on International Women’s Day, Susana Tuisawau, trustee and administrator for the regional Pacific Foundation of the Advancement of Women (PACFAW), says that formulating effective polices for women awaits the generation of current and reliable data. ”No doubt there is more awareness about women’s rights and greater protection for women through new legislation such as Fiji’s family law bill, but we cannot speak with authority when it comes to quantifying actual progress because of the absence of up-to-date, desegregated data,” she told IPS.

PACFAW, which covers eight Pacific Island countries, supports a new programme of gender advocacy with strong focus on strengthening institutional capacity at national and regional levels.

Tuisawau said that PACFAW had embarked on a four-year plan to address the lack of data on women in countries under its jurisdiction. ‘’You cannot rely on outdated data to formulate effective policies,” she said. ‘’It’s time Pacific Island governments seriously looked at their data bases and data collection methods.”

As far as the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day, ‘Ending Impunity For Violence Against Women’, is concerned, Tuisawau said that as a result of training programmes, seminars and media campaigns, women were more conscious about their rights and coming forward readily to report domestic and spousal abuse. “More women are taking their husbands to court. It’s something we rarely used to see before,” she said.

As a result of lobbying by churches, civil society organisations and trade unions, the courts were taking a more serious stand on violence against women and passing stiffer sentences which were acting as a deterrent.

In terms of education, several Pacific Island countries such as Tonga, Samoa and Fiji had achieved or were close to achieving parity, although the Melanesian countries, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea (PNG) were still lagging.

Tuisawau said many women in rural areas and the outlying islands in the South Pacific did not have access to programmes and remained ignorant of their rights. They continued to be subjugated and marginalised in terms of access to education and medical treatment.

There continued to be a glaring absence of women in decision-making positions, including parliament, even in comparatively more developed countries like Fiji. “Equity is absent in board memberships despite the availability of qualified women,” Tuisawau said. “This is evident across the Pacific.”

According to Jimmie Rodgers, a medical doctor and director-general of the secretariat of the Pacific Community, without gender equality at all levels of social, economic and political development, Pacific nations are only operating at about 50 percent of their total available potential.

“I suggest that whether we men are in a remote village in PNG or a large town in Fiji, whether we are fishermen or politicians, we each have a role to play in ensuring that the women around us – at home, at school, at work – are included and have a say.”

In a region where several countries are bedevilled by political and ethnic conflicts, the positive influence that women can have in conflict resolution is also overlooked, Tuisawau added. “At the height of tensions in the Solomon Islands in 2000, it was a group of women who persuaded militants to lay down their arms. These women included mothers, sisters, daughters and teachers who had taught some of the militants. Had it been a group of men, guns would have been fired.”

Linda Petersen, manager of the human development programme at the secretariat of the Pacific Community, said studies showed that women who were able to take an active part in family decision-making had healthier, better-educated children, with positive implications for Pacific Island societies.

She said progress is being made towards equality, but too slowly. ”The key to speeding up our progress to equality is partnership. That means fathers, husbands, brothers, sons – all the men in a woman’s life – must back her right to be heard, take part in things that matter to her, and insist on her right to be safe from violence,” she said.

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