Highlights of this Pacific summary of the 2012 Women’s Economic Empowerment Index include:
- Fiji is the highest ranked Pacific country (81 out of 128 ranked countries).
- Solomon Islands (125/128) and Papua New Guinea (126/128) are in the bottom five, ranked lower than all Sub-Saharan African countries except Sudan.
The Australian Government’s ‘Gender Equality Thematic Strategy, Promoting opportunities for all’ identifies economic empowerment and livelihood security as Pillar 3 of the strategy because economic empowerment of women is fundamental to enabling women to live productive and meaningful lives. This guide covers development programming through direct investments and within mainstream investments.
Women’s economic empowerment can be improved through direct investments that:
Health pandemics have specific and severe impacts on the lives of women and girls. Since the COVID-19 outbreak first had reported cases, the gendered impacts began being documented in the Pacific and across the world. Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by crises. Existing gender inequalities are exacerbated during a crisis, with the result that women and girls face even higher rates of violence, sexual abuse and control from their husbands, partners and families.
This review involved a desk review of policies and project documents and consultations with Pacific Region Infrastructure Facility (PRIF) agency representatives and staff from other agencies working in the Pacific. It:
- Collates information about how gender concerns are considered and managed in PRIF Infrastructure programs.
- Identifies areas of good practice.
- Identifies lessons to enhance gender-responsive planning and management in Pacific infrastructure projects.
This study deals with research on eight critical areas of concern covered in the Revised Pacific Platform for Action 2005-2015: education, health, climate change and environment, economic empowerment, gender mainstreaming, leadership and decision-making, violence against women and human rights.
While gender research on each issue exists in one way or another in the Pacific, there are many unknowns as to the scope, nature, and quality of this research. This study therefore:
- Maps and provides a gap analysis of existing gender research in the eight thematic areas.
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.
Addressing the multiple dimensions of gender inequality requires commitments by policy-makers, practitioners and scholars to transformative practices. One challenge is to assemble a coherent conceptual framework from diverse knowledges and experiences. This article contains a framework that emerged from the authors’ involvement in changing market culture in the Pacific, which they name the ‘radical empowerment of women approach’.
Even as the importance of women’s economic inclusion and empowerment is acknowledged and acted on, it is also known that such gains are not without risk; for increasing command over financial resources can expose women to domestic conflict and violence.
This paper encourages a more targeted focus on women’s economic empowerment through private sector development partnerships, not least through a greater mutual allocation of funds, and design effort.
The findings suggest that the ECF has contributed both to women’s economic advancement and perhaps to a lesser extent, to women’s power and agency.
ECF has increased women’s access to employment, training and income, and access to markets, and supported women-owned enterprises to expand their businesses. Specific initiatives that have affected women include:
From Participation to Power: Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) in the Pacific – addressing the shortfall of many WEE initiatives to meaningfully address women’s empowerment and provides recommendations and practical actions to strengthen empowerment outcomes of WEE programming.
Small Grants, Big Results – highlighting the catalytic role of community-based and women’s organisations to women’s empowerment and social change, this Practice Note provides an evidence-base of successful small-granting approaches and strong partnerships, to influence funders to expand small granting programs.
The Pacific Women final report features stories highlighting the voices and key achievements of Pacific women and men across the 14 countries supported by Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development (Pacific Women). The impacts of initiatives supported by Pacific Women are diverse, spanning across the program’s four outcomes of Leadership and Decision Making; Economic Empowerment; Ending Violence against Women; and Enhancing Agency. The Final Report includes data and impacts achieved over the life of the program, since it began in 2012
The Pacific Women Highlights booklet provides a snapshot view of key achievements of Pacific women and men across the 14 countries supported by Pacific Women. Pacific Women has reached an estimated 1.45 million Pacific women, men and children since 2012, through partnerships with Pacific organisations and gender equality advocates. The Highlights booklet includes data and impacts achieved over the life of the program, since it began in 2012.
Pacific Women program activities support the Bougainville Gender Investment Plan, which prioritises the following objectives:
- Reducing family and sexual violence and assist survivors of violence.
- Strengthen women’s leadership.
- Improve women’s economic opportunities.
This report includes the following highlights:
This report contains highlights for the Pacific Women in Papua New Guinea program, including the conclusion from the mid-term evaluation that the program is on track to achieve its objectives, and that the program uses evidence to inform policy and practice.
Other highlights include:
The purpose of the workshop was to share findings from the review of the Pacific Women Fiji Country Plan and the Pacific Women Year Three Evaluation and consider the implications of findings for future Pacific Women programming in Fiji.
The workshop was designed to maximise input from local experts, as well as provide the opportunity for peer sharing. In addition, exercises were developed to ensure partners strengthened or developed new relationships with each other.
Agriculture constitutes over 65% of the country’s TOP $26 million exports (approximately AU$16 million) and accounts for 14% of Tonga’s GDP. Two-thirds of Tonga’s households are involved in agricultural production, with approximately 2.4% of households operating as commercial producers in the formal economy. Another 39% of households produce some crops to sell through markets and roadside stalls in the informal economy.
Since 2009, Australian funding has supported:
- 10 000 survivors of family violence to receive legal assistance and counselling services. 132 women from Vanuatu have benefited from the Australia Awards scholarship program.
- 2,400 women have been trained through Australian Government funded TVET Centres.
- 130 women from the justice sector have been coached and mentored in decision-making skills.
This Thematic Brief discusses five key messages about the emerging impacts of COVID-19 on adolescent girsl in the Pacific:
Employing an established survey treatment to subtly alter respondents’ perception of their relative economic wellbeing, it was noted that increased feelings of relative poverty make both women and men significantly more likely to support girls’ schooling and women’s paid employment, suggesting that relative economic insecurity can prompt support for women’s economic participation. However, increased feelings of relative poverty may trigger greater intra-household tension.