MELBOURNE (Radio Australia/Pacific Media Watch): A three-day workshop held by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Papua New Guinea has focused on training women seeking to contest the upcoming 2015 General Election in Bougainville.
Radio Australia presenter Richard Ewert has spoken to the head of the UNDP’s governance team, Julie Bukikun.
Bukikun raised the issue of gender equality in the political field and said part of the reason for running a workshop was the recognition that the “difficulties that women face and the challenges out there in elections” are similar to the challenges faced by local women.
Three seats are reserved for women in the Papua New Guinea Parliament, but Bukikun says women should be contesting the open seats also.
“Most importantly, apart from the three seats reserved for women, are the open seats, and we are trying to encourage more women to get there because as you know if you have only three women in parliament, and still there is unequal participation, in terms of policy and law making and other things that are important to the development of Bougainville."
Bukikun said the reserving of the seats for women was an advantage to get more women into Parliament, but there could be disadvantages.
“Sometimes we’ve seen [that] it discourages women to go into the open seats and also sometimes the confusion with the voters, thinking there are only 3 seats for women, therefore we only vote there and we don’t vote in the open seats”.
'Awareness needed'
“What is required is a lot of awareness about how these seats operate”.
Although it is still unclear who exactly will be contesting a position in Parliament, Bukikun said the outcome of the workshop was “positive”.
“We did a review of our work and we are very, very positive, very confident in the women who came. They are mature women, they know the challenges out there and they know what needs to be done."
Twenty five women were on the training programme.
The polls will be open for two weeks for the Bougainville General Election on May 11-25.
Full Radio Australia interview
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