Focus on gender equality
Ministries to set up action groups
GOVERNMENT ministries will soon establish gender mainstreaming, action groups, to assist the process of transformative gender mainstreaming, responsive budgeting and planning.
This, according to Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation Mereseini Vuniwaqa, while launching the Gender transformative institutional capacity development at the Grand Pacific Hotel, Suva yesterday.
She said the groups would replace the previous system of gender focal points.
Mrs Vuniwaqa said it would be led by a permanent secretary and all members from line departments at director and principal levels of respective government agencies.
The groups, she said, would focus on co-ordinating and supporting the implementation, monitoring and reporting on gender equality commitments.
She said the newly launched institutional capacity development would include need assessments, gender analysis and a series of sector and context-specific knowledge products, training workshops, on-job training, coaching and most importantly gender mainstreaming action plans and gender budget statements.
Fiji Women’s Rights Movement executive director Nalini Singh said women in Fiji now have privileges to maternity leave, the right to vote, right to education and have access to equal opportunities.
New Zealand High Commissioner to Fiji, Jonathan Curr said to promote gender equality, there was an urgent need to transform laws and practices.
He said women in the legislature have doubled across the world.