This short paper reports on planned research in Fiji, the first country in the Pacific to pilot a measure of poverty at an individual level from a gender perspective.
Poverty profiles presented in Fiji emphasise income, consumption and expenditure characteristics that are often associated with poverty measurement at a household level. Measurement approaches aggregated by households often obscure the gendered experience of poverty by assuming that aspects of men’s and women’s lives are common, rather than that there are dimensions that are particularly important to women or men.
At the opening of the 2014 State of the Pacific Conference organised by the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop noted the Australian Government’s commitment to expanding the Seasonal Worker Program (SWP) and the contribution that labour mobility could make to development in the Pacific. In the minister’s words, ‘some seasonal workers have earned up to $12,000 in Australia, and have been able to remit about $6,000 over a six month placement, the scheme is having flow-on benefits.