Women’s reserved seats important to break cultural barriers, says Abel

SPECIAL Parliamentary Committee chairman on gender-based violence (GBV) and Alotau MP Charles Abel says five reserved seats for women in parliament is important to break down cultural barriers.
He believes more women leaders are needed to guarantee political representation and it is the committee’s ninth term of reference.
The committee was to inquire into how women leadership could be more proactively supported so that women could help lead the response to GBV by implementing temporary special measures for women in parliament.
When asked what he thought of Dame Josephine Abaijah and Dame Carol Kidu’s opposition to the idea of reserving five special seats for women, he pointed to their lack of representation thus far since independence.
“All I know that this is the 10th parliament and we have only had seven women elected in total,” he said.
“Today, we are one of three countries out of 235 in the world with no women in parliament.” Abel said that this is why temporary special measures are needed to aid the process just like in Rwanda, Samoa and other countries, where special measures have guaranteed female participation.
He said the GBV strategy requires for one safe house to be established in each province.