Why parliament lack women

Will 2022 be a repeat of the General Election 2017 for women candidates?

Papua New Guinea became one of only four countries in the world to have no female members of parliament (MPs) following the General Election of 2017 (GE17).
A national forum on women candidates’ participation was convened in Port Moresby on Aug 17 and 18 2017, by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP PNG.)
Another was also held in Madang on Sept 26 that year.
They made recommendations on the actions needed to improve the performance of women candidates in the 2022 general election.
The Pacific women’s political empowerment research group, based in the Cairns Institute at James Cook University, tracked the extent to which the recommendations had been implemented since 2017.
The findings are summarised in the “Preparations for increasing women’s success at the 2022 PNG national election over the 2017-2022 electoral cycle”.
Considerable work has been undertaken by stakeholders to support aspiring women candidates, despite the challenges of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) between 2020 and 2022.
The key recommendations not implemented included:

• IMPLEMENTATION of temporary special measures for reserved seats or candidate political party quotas;
• ESTABLISHMENT of a specific fund to enable women candidates to access finances for key campaign materials and logistics;
• STRENGTHENING the capacity of the National Council of Women to support women candidates;
• THAT the PNG Electoral Commission and partners conduct regular training for women on the electoral processes, including nominations, campaign rules, voting system and the limited preferential voting, right down to the ward level; and
• DELIVERY of a voter education and civic education programme to provide information and begin the process of changing community attitudes towards women’s political leadership, beginning with programs in schools and villages.

With 3,458 male candidates compared to 167 female, what guarantee is there that women will be successful in this election?
The sheer number of male contestants is indicative of the belief that parliamentary seats are a male preserve.
The one key recommendation which, if implemented, could have guaranteed the election of women was the adoption of the temporary special measures.
Women had advocated for these measures since 2009.
There was hope that this could be achieved when a coalition of 20 male MPs formed the “United for Equality” in 2020 and established a special parliamentary committee of inquiry on Gender-Based Violence (GBV), chaired by Alotau MP Charles Abel.
The terms of reference included “inquire into how women’s leadership can be more proactively supported to ensure that women can lead the response to GBV, including temporary special measures for women in Parliament”.
The committee held public hearings in May 2021 and March 2022.
It tried to introduce five reserved seats for women – one seat per region – in spite of the fact that there are only four recognised regions in PNG.
However, this proposal was contentious and failed through lack of community and government support.
The Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates Commission has also been very active in its advocacy of its draft “Organic Law on Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates Bill” which contains a provision for a 20 per cent political party candidate quota for women.
But despite the current Bill having been drafted in 2019, approved by National Executive Council, gazetted and passed on to Parliament in September 2020, it was never debated.
The GE22 will test the argument that women should compete on equal footing with men to win seats.
Some of the activities in this electoral cycle do provide grounds for optimism.
While the Covid-19 pandemic had a significant negative impact on PNG, one of the positive results is that the commission, rather than international organisations, held workshops and forums in PNG over the past four years to raise awareness, skill women and prepare them for the election.
Women themselves have had to be more self-reliant and work more closely with the communities in their constituencies to gain support.
It appears to have had a positive effect with an estimated 30 per cent of the 167 women candidates having been endorsed by political parties.
A few major political parties are providing strong support for their women candidates in 2022, particularly in the urban areas where their chances of election are greater.
The active engagement of male party leaders is another promising feature.
Four political parties that deserve mention are Pangu Pati led by Prime Minister James Marape, PNC Party led by the former PM Peter O’Neill, People’s Party led by Enga Governor Sir Peter Ipatas, and the Social Democratic Party led by NCD Governo, Powes Parkop.
All these leaders attended campaign rallies of their female candidates.
There is no doubt that there are well qualified and courageous women seeking election, and there are some grounds for optimism that two or possibly more will be successful.
There are no signs, however, that there have been any fundamental changes to the structural, institutional, and cultural barriers that were responsible for the outcome for women in 2017.
One can only hope that the lessons learnt from GE17 and GE22 will be acted on to achieve greater success for women in GE27 by the implementation, hopefully, of the temporary special measures.

This article appeared first on Devpolicy Blog (devpolicy.org), from the Development Policy Centre at The Australian National University.

Orovu Sepoe is a gender equity and social inclusion specialist. Currently working as a consultant, she was formerly a senior lecturer at the University of Papua New Guinea.

Dr Lesley Clark served for five terms in the Queensland Parliament in Australia.
Since 2006 she has consulted on projects in the Asia Pacific region to increase the political participation of women. She has participated in several election observation missions, including the last three in Papua New Guinea.

Teddy Winn is a PhD candidate in Political Science at James Cook University.