It Is Wisdom …When Women Share in Decision Making

November 18, 2004 -(femLINKpacific) With a mission to get more women elected or appointed into parliament, local government institutions and policy making statutory bodies and communities, and setting a target of 50% of women’s representation at all levels of decision making by 2015, participants at this week’s national consultation on Women in Decision Making, have formulated a draft National NGO Plan of Action on Women in Shared Decision Making (WISDM), which will now be fine tuned for implementation by a steering committee, to be chaired by the National Council of Women.

Throughout the consultation, representatives of non government organizations, trade unions, political parties and educational institutions have collectively voiced concern that women, including young women ofFiji, remain marginalized from their rightful place as active participants in decision making.

The (draft) National NGO Plan of Action on Women in Shared Decision Making (WISDM) targets key areas for action, to realize the goals of gender equality as enshrined in the 1997 Constitution, CEDAW, the Beijing Platform for Action, the Revised Pacific Platform for Action, and the Fiji’s Government’s National Women’s Plan of Action and the Fiji Government’s Strategic Development Plan (2003 – 2005 / 8), including:

- The need for legislation, in order to have an effective national women’s machinery. This, they feel would be important to link present commitments to gender equality and shared decision making, from the Strategic Development Plan, the National Women’s Plan of Action, to current governance structures including the political party structures, and other institutions of government, such as the Fijian Administration system

- Participants have realized that there remains a great need to not only to educate women in their organizations and groups, as well as the wider citizenship, including decision makers / policy makers, in order to understand that gender quality commitments are not exclusively “for women only”

- Given the ongoing obstacles for women to advance into decision-making positions, whether it is into political parties management, or to elected positions at national and local/provincial level, quotas or affirmative action, are clearly necessary options

- Participants have also agreed that in order for women to effectively contribute to decision-making they need a more enabling environment. Too often, it was observed, that even when women are in positions of decision-making, unfortunately too often because of patronage systems and “old boys’ networks” or informal decision-making processes “around the grog bowl” further alienate them

- Community outreach and education is vital from family networks to the wider community and so are information-communication networks

- Participants also commit to strengthening and maintain civil society alliances / collaborations

- Institutionalised capacity building is clearly a long term goal in order to effectively sustain the goal of gender equality in decision making

The objectives of the draft National NGO Plan of Action on WISDM, include:

1. To increase the number of women, including young women, at leadership level in political parties

2. To secure a firm commitment from political parties to advance women’s rights and address gender issues

3. To increase the number of women appointed to key decision making positions within the public and private sectors

4. To increase the number of women elected or appointed to national and local levels of decision making

The consultation was enabled by the Women in Politics regional programme of UNIFEM Pacific.


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