The
Pacific’s premiere meeting on economic and finance issues, the FEMM, in its
Action Plan for 2007 provided its annual litany of challenges to economic
growth without mentioning the critical element holding back millions of
Pacific women from being equitable partners in that growth—gender
discrimination.
That lack of a mention is a stinging blow for a Pacific ministerial on women
and gender, which just a month before had urged regional meetings such as
FEMM and the annual Pacific Islands Leaders Forum to introduce
gender-relevant discussions as an ongoing agenda feature.
Whether in-country briefings of those attending FEMM by those who had been at
the Pacific women’s sessions and/or 3rd Ministerial on Women had fallen on
deaf ears, or never happened, is just one part of the wider problem.
Those on the defensive could point to a pre-set agenda, but even that process
for FEMM has been relaxed and ministers reading off-agenda reports can speak
to them in-session.
Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Greg Urwin also hinted at flexibility
in his opening remarks to the Ministerial on July 10 when he said, “I am left
wondering whether we have still quite got it right, in terms, first, of the
matters we cover in the meeting, and secondly, in respect of the translation
of the decisions taken by it to the broader regional agenda and their take-up
as well at the national level.”
But with the FEMM outcomes feeding into the Pacific Leaders Forum this
October in Tonga, Pacific women may be right in feeling left out of ‘the boys
club process’ of regional gatherings of leaders.
Given the continued and clear 10th triennial call for Pacific nations to get
their act together on gender inequality, the marginalisation is even more
difficult to swallow.
At stake is not just whether Pacific women, often at the heart of enterprise
development and labour mobility issues in the region, will still be invisible
when these initiatives move ahead and are reported back to FEMM 2008.
There are new credibility issues too, on whether Pacific nations and the
regional agencies serving them can stand up to the ‘new regionalism’ promised
by the Pacific Plan.
The difficulty of getting organisations to talk to each other on common
issues when cabinet ministers at country level aren’t even sharing their
travel stories provides an almost ironic retrospect for the 10th triennial.
During the 9th Triennial and 2nd Ministerial in Nadi in 2004, SPC’s then
senior deputy Dr Jimmie Rodgers reassured delegates that women and gender
were featured “centre stage” in the Pacific Plan.
With the 10th triennial themed around stepping up the pace on the plan
towards balancing the gender scales; the missing agenda item at FEMM ensures
a process which enables leaders to talk about economic growth, without a
mention of gender dimensions; has gaping holes in it.
Another leading activist is less diplomatic about the cost of gender
inequality to economic development.
“Why is it so hard for our region to act? We have nothing to lose and all the
benefits to gain for our children, families, communities, nations and the
region as a whole.”
The hunt for answers to that curly question would do better to look for lines
of responsibility and accountability rather than someone to blame.
While gender has been on the FEMM periphery through a 2003 focus on the
Millennium Development Goals, papers to the ministers on gender and trade in
2004, and last year’s note in passing in the Honiara outcomes statement, the
2007 ministerial on women went much further in its language on ways to
‘engender’ FEMM.
Pacific ministers for women this year put the region and their own countries
on notice that it’s time to make women count.
Specific reference was made to the difficulty of costing the contribution of
women to the economy through unpaid labour, and urged governments to
incorporate that work as part of national accounts.
Other items that could easily have merged with FEMM 2007 discussions included
the need for gender budgeting to assist financial reforms, the challenge of
poverty, and strengthening of the Pacific Plan.
For SPC’s Linda Petersen, the fact that none of the above made it into the
FEMM outcomes statement was, in one word, “disappointing”.
It is more so for someone who first came to SPC as the Women’s Development
Adviser in 2005 and has since led a special focus on collaboration with PIFS
through its Gender Issues Adviser on strategies which can build up sympathy,
understanding and much-needed action for gender policies gathering dust on
the shelves of regional organisations.
Now managing the new Human Development Programme cluster merging Women,
Culture, Youth and the Fiji-based Community Education and training centre,
Petersen had seen first-hand during her UNDP role in Suva, the sizeable task
for the first PIFS Gender Issues Adviser, Gayle Nelson.
She and her successors, Margaret Leniston (now with FSPI) and Samantha Hung
(now with NZAID) collaborated extensively with SPC and other partners,
targeting gender and trade/economics and the FEMM process as part of their
workload on strategic entry points to gain a higher profile for gender action
amongst Pacific leaders.
With gender providing an easy example of how organisations are not talking to
themselves about the policies they should be implementing, no-one knows that
better than the person who first led the charge on gender work in the Pacific
Islands Forum Secretariat.
Credited with much of the cutting-edge work on getting gender into Pacific
organisations, Nelson initiated a regional working group on gender covering
Pacific organisations to take on gender strategies.
Now an international consultant, her comments on best meeting the challenge
of matching gender policies to action in our regional bodies ring as true now
as they did more than a decade ago, when the region was still coming to grips
with G-words like gender and governance.
Nelson says without the accountability mechanisms in place to monitor action
or the lack of it against those policies, the dust-gathering begins.
“The leadership and the Forum have to take responsibility and be accountable
for gender, and ensure it is integrated into the work of the divisions
responsible for trade and economic ministerial meetings.”
She says FEMM provides an example of how staff are allowed to leave gaps in
their analysis without thinking about the gender implications of their
policies and proposals, “because they are not held accountable to the gender
policy.”
A shortage of technical capacity to do the quality gender analysis of issues,
and funding for that kind of work, further compounds the problem.
Gender is an aspect of development work easily endorsed but difficult to act
on, usually because organisations themselves don’t understand what is
involved in its implementation.
There isn’t the structure at regional agencies to support the
interdisciplinary work involved, and individual advisers end up bearing the
brunt of internal resistance to understanding gender as part of a working
ethic from male and female colleagues alike.
The politics of resisting rather than implementing gender change tends to be
the rule rather than the exception; which forces the question of what needs
to happen in regional organisations like PIFS so that Pacific women as
stakeholders in economic development end up on the agenda of a meeting like
FEMM.
Nelson says the decision-making and budget structures need a gender-sensitive
overhaul. Gender needs to be mentioned in terms of references across
divisions, and staff need to include it in their planning and budgeting.
Without this in place, she warns, “the marginalisation of the issue is
perpetuated.”
That warning, and leveling of accountability with PIFS leadership, may yet be
taken up by the current executive. Urwin, during the media conference as FEMM
2007 closed, noted the self-evident point that “we can’t press willy-nilly
into economic growth without focusing on economic issues in our part of the
world”.
Someone who may best be placed to guide FEMM back from the willy-nilly nature
of avoiding gender issues would be Urwin’s own number two, Peter Forau, who
attended the 9th Triennial and 2nd Ministerial on women in 2004. His role at
the time? Head of the Solomon Islands delegation.
