This report summarises the workshop approach, objectives, key learning outcomes and participant recommendations of the third Pacific Women and Fiji Women’s Fund Fiji Annual Reflection and Planning Workshop.
The primary objectives of the workshop were for participants to:
- Reflect on overall progress in advancing gender equality at various levels.
- Share experiences and lessons learned in promoting women’s economic empowerment, enhancing women’s leadership opportunities and capabilities, ending violence against women and coalition building.
The fifth Pacific Women in Papua New Guinea Annual Learning Workshop offered an opportunity for Pacific Women-funded and non-funded partners to come together to discuss their work and research and to share lessons about what is working, the challenges, and the opportunities for promoting gender equality in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific.
This toolkit provides sequential activities to support organisations to ensure that gender equality and the empowerment of women are integrated into their programming. The activities are: 1. Exploring Our Own Expertise About Gender and Diversity. 2. Social and Personal Identity Wheel. 3. Exploring Our Diversity. 4. The Story of Joana and Jona. 5. Choosing the sex of your child. 6. Ideal Man, Ideal Woman. 7. Pressures and Privileges of Being a Man/Woman. 8. Definitions. 9. The New Planet. 10. Group Activity. 11. Power Walk. 12. Power Role Play. 13. The Gender Equality Framework. 14.
This report summarises the workshop approach, objectives, key learning outcomes and participant recommendations of the third Pacific Women and Fiji Women’s Fund Fiji Annual Reflection and Planning Workshop.
The workshop objectives were to:
- Enable Fiji Government, civil society and stakeholders to reflect on overall progress and key issues to advance gender equality in Fiji.
- Update grantees of the Fund on findings from its six-monthly report analysis.
The fourth Pacific Women in Papua New Guinea Annual Learning Workshop provided an update on activities, research, innovation, and good practice undertaken by Pacific Women and its partners in 2017-2018 in the areas of:
- Increasing women’s leadership and decision making.
- Increasing economic opportunities for women.
- Reducing violence against women and expanding support services.
Key findings from this research into women’s and girl’s experiences of menstruation in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are:
- Adolescent girls and women face a number of challenges that influence their ability to manage menstruation effectively and with dignity; these challenges interact, and have the potential to negatively influence physical and emotional health, participation at school, work and in the community, and impact the environment.
Key findings from this research into women’s and girl’s experiences of menstruation in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are:
- Adolescent girls and women face a number of challenges that influence their ability to manage menstruation effectively and with dignity; these challenges interact, and have the potential to negatively influence physical and emotional health, participation at school, work and in the community, and impact the environment.
Key findings from this research into women’s and girl’s experiences of menstruation in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are:
- Adolescent girls and women face a number of challenges that influence their ability to manage menstruation effectively and with dignity; these challenges interact, and have the potential to negatively influence physical and emotional health, participation at school, work and in the community, and impact the environment.
Key findings from this research into women’s and girl’s experiences of menstruation in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are:
- Adolescent girls and women face a number of challenges that influence their ability to manage menstruation effectively and with dignity; these challenges interact, and have the potential to negatively influence physical and emotional health, participation at school, work and in the community, and impact the environment.
Key findings from this research into women’s and girl’s experiences of menstruation in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are:
- Adolescent girls and women face a number of challenges that influence their ability to manage menstruation effectively and with dignity; these challenges interact, and have the potential to negatively influence physical and emotional health, participation at school, work and in the community, and impact the environment.
The case studies of coalitions in Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea and Tonga highlight four influential factors in the formation and functioning of coalitions:
Formative events: What brought people together to ‘do something’ in a concerted way? For example, the torture and death of a woman in a sorcery-related violence incident generated the impetus for the formation of the Papua New Guinea coalition examined in this study. Whether formative events are locally or externally driven appears to mould the future shape of a coalition and how it functions.
This study analysed a random selection of 908 cases from seven Pacific Island countries, including 111 domestic violence cases and 787 sexual assault cases. Each case is analysed to determine whether gender stereotypes, customary reconciliation (e.g. apology, forgiveness) or other contentious factors were considered during sentencing. Contentious factors are those factors which, when used in mitigation by the court, discriminate against the victim on the basis of her gender.
Adolescent girls in the Pacific face challenges because they are girls; and they can also be discriminated against for other reasons, such as having a disability or getting pregnant. In this short video, adolescent girls from the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu talk about the issues that are important to them – such as education and climate change, the challenges they face – such as violence in their homes and cyber bullying, and the strategies they believe will work to empower adolescent girls in the region.
This is a 2013 supplement to the 700 page 1998 text ‘Law for Pacific Women: A Legal Rights Handbook (1998) by Imrana Jalal.’ The Handbook and the Supplement examine legislation, court decisions, common law, legal structures and legal practices in the Pacific Islands through a human rights, feminist lens. The Handbook and Supplement are designed to be used together. The Supplement covers the laws and legal processes relating to:
- Violence against women.
- Family law.
- Social and economic issues.
- Women as criminal defendants.
This publication is a ‘one-stop-shop’ for international human rights conventions and other related documents. It is designed to be a reference for judges, magistrates, legal practitioners, law students human rights advocates, civil society representatives and policy makers across the Pacific.
This toolkit is a starting point for community organisations to mainstream gender into their work. It provides a straightforward and practical framework for gender mainstreaming and a clear process for applying it within an organisation. The toolkit assumes that the reader will have a basic understanding of the concepts of gender and gender equality. Gender mainstreaming involves working through a checklist of different components and putting practical actions in place to achieve them.
This annual report notes that the eyes of the world were focused on Samoa and the wider region for the Small Islands Developing States Conference and UN Women’s Executive Director, Phumzile Mlambo Nguka’s first visit to the Pacific.
Highlights from the year included:
- The launch of UN Women’s Markets for Change project.
- A highly visible 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence campaign.
This paper supports the case for a transformative goal on gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment. The case for a stand-alone gender-related goal, as well as addressing gender priorities into each goal, has been actively supported by Pacific Leaders and the women’s movement. The importance of a standalone goal in post-2015 development agenda was evident at the 12th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women held 2013.
The overall message of the four-day meeting was that there can be no realisation of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for Pacific women without attention to issues of bodily integrity and autonomy, and that no gender equality is possible without realisation of full human rights and social justice - including core focus on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
The forum provided a secure place for diverse Pacific feminist and human rights civil society organisations, networks and advocates from across the Pacific region to:
Every day, 20,000 girls below age 18 give birth in developing countries. Births to girls also occur in developed countries but on a much smaller scale. Most of the world’s births to adolescents— 95 per cent—occur in developing countries, and nine in 10 of these births occur within marriage or a union. About 19 per cent of young women in developing countries become pregnant before age 18. Girls under 15 account for 2 million of the 7.3 million births that occur to adolescent girls under 18 every year in developing countries.