Status of Women's Leadership in the Public Sector in Pacific Small Island States

Abstract

In 2014 the Commonwealth Secretariat commissioned research on the status of women in leadership in the political, public and private sectors across the Commonwealth, in order to: �generate, collate and synthesize baseline data on women in leadership; ... identify key challenges and recommend policy interventions for enhancing women�s leadership; [and] support the creation of a Commonwealth-wide network for women in leadership� (Commonwealth Secretariat 2015:5). Although official letters were sent to all ministries of women's affairs through their High Commissions in London, the response from the Pacific Island States was poor. Limited as it was, the data presented in the Status of Women in Leadership Across the Commonwealth report (ibid)makes evident that the Pacific lags behind other regions with regard to key women�s leadership indicators. Indeed, the degree to which women are under-represented in Pacific legislatures is more pronounced than anywhere else in the world. For example while �women account for around 20 per cent of elected leaders worldwide they account for only 3 per cent of elected leaders in the sovereign states of the Pacific, and in Melanesia (Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu), home to nearly eight million people, only 4 of the 213 parliamentary seats (1.9 per cent) are held by women� (Haley and Zubrinich 2016:5).Key amongst the Status of Women report�s findings was that none of the 11 Pacific Islands Countries have achieved the 30% threshold for female cabinet ministers. The best performing countries in this regard were New Zealand (25%) and Fiji (20%). Particularly disappointing is that women hold less than 10% of cabinet positions in 7 of the 11 Pacific member states (see Figure1. below; Commonwealth Secretariat 2015:15). Women�s progress into �senior executive positions in the public and private sectors remains likewise sluggish� (Hinds 2015:2), and has been much slower in the Pacific than in other developing regions, meaning women�s participation in public decision making continues to be weak.