Topics in the Contemporary Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. ix, 198 pp. (Tables, illustrations.) US$68.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-7259-5.
Women in most countries are underrepresented in parliaments; according to the Inter-Parliamentary union the global average of women in parliament is about 24 percent. However, the proportions of women in Pacific Islands states and territories are among the lowest in the world. As documented in this book, of the twelve Pacific Island states, currently Fiji has the highest proportion of female parliamentarians with 16 percent; the rest had 10 percent or less, and in three cases, none. This situation has elicited various responses from Pacific Island governments and their development partners towards increasing the proportions of women. Pacific Women in Politics presents an analysis of four campaigns with this goal—for quotas and reserved seats (Samoa, Papua New Guinea, and the Autonomous Region of Bougainville), and in response to parity laws (the French Pacific territories).
Samoa led the way with a legislative amendment requiring that 10 percent of seats in parliament be held by women. A parity law requiring parties to preselect equal numbers of male and female candidates was not considered as an option because political parties in Samoa do not preselect their candidates, but may endorse several competing candidates for the same seat. The amendment to the Electoral Act provided that if less than 10 percent of women candidates in a parliamentary election were elected in the usual way, those with the largest share of votes that were achieved (without actually winning a seat) would be appointed to parliament. The amendment was motivated by the government’s wish to be responsive to international concerns rather than to a significant local demand for the change. Samoa had a poor showing on the indicator for the number of women in parliament under Goal Three of the Millennium Development goals (2000–2015). In addition, the United Nations Committee for the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) had called Samoa to account a number of times on structural barriers to women’s candidacy in its electoral system. The 10 percent law was pushed through by a powerful prime minister, and made possible (although not without some background grumbling) by the fact that Samoa has what is in effect a one-party system with a firm, long-term grip on parliament.
The case of Samoa provides a distinct contrast to the other three cases considered in the book. In Papua New Guinea, calls for reserved seats came from prominent women, supported by international agencies committed to women’s equality, and with considerable public debate on the merits from both women and men. A Women’s Bill was passed in 2011, but the two-thirds parliamentary majority required to incorporate it into Organic Law on National and Local Level Government Elections was not achieved in 2012. After the 2017 elections (when no women won seats, as they had done in previous elections), the proposal lacked sufficiently powerful sponsors to push it into law. In the case of Bougainville’s post-conflict Constituent Assembly, calls for the allocation of reserved seats for women also mainly came from women, and advocates of the measure succeeded in getting seats reserved for women in each of Bougainville’s three regions. In the French territories, France imposed its gender parity law requiring political parties to nominate approximately equal numbers of men and women in the electorates they were contesting. The result was a significant increase the proportion of women elected to national assemblies in New Caledonia and French Polynesia.
Author Kerryn Baker provides a thoughtful and detailed analysis of the complex underlying circumstances of each of these campaigns. As the many studies of women and politics in the Pacific cited by Baker demonstrate, women are rapidly achieving equality with men in terms of education and employment, although there are proportionally far fewer women than men in the formal sectors of the economies. Politics seems to represent the so-called glass ceiling. Baker describes how in each of the campaigns there was a consensus that without some form of quota, few women would ever win seats in open elections. She identifies and explores a number of overlapping themes that emerged in the four campaigns, as well as arguments that justified or disputed the need for special measures for women’s inclusion in parliament. Do women bring different perspectives to parliament compared to those of men? Are women’s interests different to those of men? Should measures be taken, not because women are essentially different from men, but because it is their right as citizens? Are quotas the best way to gradually accustom electorates to the idea of women parliamentarians and to overcome male prejudice? Do quotas contravene democracy? Or custom?
Custom was invoked in these campaigns to both justify and to oppose special measures. For example, in Bougainville many groups are matrilineal, and in Samoa a custom often invoked is that a brother must respect his sister and include her in deciding extended family matters. But in neither Bougainville nor Samoa did women traditionally exercise public political authority.
The parity laws imposed by France have produced by far the best results. In 2018, 49 percent of seats were held by women in the Assembly of French Polynesia, and in 2014 women held 44 percent of seats in the New Caledonia Congress. Yet, in Wallis and Futuna, lacking a strong party system, the parity measure could not be effectively applied.
Baker’s detailed analyses of the processes underlying the four case studies touch on other very relevant issues such as the low proportion of women in local and municipal governments where gender quotas have yet to be considered. In the traditionalist system of village councils in Samoa women tend to be either overtly or tacitly excluded, whereas in more Westernized systems such as that of French Polynesia, women are making significant gains. Baker concludes the book with a call for research to “further examine the questions of what success looks like in quota campaigns and who defines it” (159). This reviewer heartily agrees; data that I and my colleagues collected on success factors in Samoan elections were ignored by the organizers of a donor-funded project to increase women’s candidacy in the 2019 election. The project increased the number of women candidates, but had no effect on the results, according to a post-election survey. The donor-led design of the project was based on the doubtful assumption that campaign measures found successful in metropolitan democracies are transferable to the electoral systems of Pacific Island states.
Penelope Schoeffel
National University of Samoa, Apia