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 paper examines the experience and lessons of three projects implemented by CARE International in Papua New Guinea to inform best practice in inclusive governance programming in the future. CARE’s governance work enables citizens (the “grassroots”) and government (representative as well as the civil service) to come together, disrupting negative or destructive cycles of distrust, inaction and disempowerment.
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.
For this research, 12 young Bougainvillean women were trained in research methods. Six teams of two women then undertook research in six districts, covering the three regions of Bougainville (North, Central and South). The teams conducted 52 individual interviews and 49 group discussions. Field researchers participated in an initial analysis workshop and the lead researcher was mentored as a co-author of the research report.
The Autonomous Region of Bougainville introduced the Pacific’s first parliamentary reserved seats for women system in 2004. While the system guarantees a minimum level of representation for women in the Bougainville House of Representatives, concerns have been raised that the reserved seats act as a ceiling for women’s representation and prevent women from successfully contesting other seats. No women candidates contested the 33 open seats in the 2005 election. In the 2010 election, five women contested open seats.
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:
Despite the existence of affirmative action measures at the sub-national level in almost all Pacific island countries (a little known fact), women’s political representation at this level continues to remain significantly low. Nevertheless, regional trends indicate that women’s political representation at the sub-national level is gradually increasing and in most cases is higher than at the national level.