Activist calls for Tabuya’s reinstatement

FEMINIST and human rights activist Shamima Ali has spoken out publicly in support of Women’s Minister Lynda Tabuya saying women in leadership are often judged by their personal and sexual behaviour.

She called on the PM to reinstate Ms Tabuya and look at the facts instead of making decisions based on allegations.

The removal of Ms Tabuya as The People’s Alliance’s deputy leader, she said, set a bad precedent as it was done through allegations against a woman leader, who was doing well and did not “conform to the norm”.

Ms Ali said women were held to a different standard compared with men, adding that over the past three decades, she had seen her fair share of “sexual harassers, wife-beaters and girlfriendbeaters” in Parliament, however, no one judged these men by those actions.

The Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) co-ordinator said Fiji already had such a dismal performance in terms of women’s leadership in all spheres of life and there was always talk about boosting women’s leadership.

However, the current issue was “sending very wrong signals” to women.

“Women’s leadership is often judged by her personal and particularly, by her sexual behaviour so as you see, where is the second party here?” she asked.

“We’re not talking about him, where is he? And the media has been very bad at this. Sex and drug scandal, kind of thing. I thought the media was there to tell the truth. It’s all allegations; it hasn’t been proven and yet people are making judgement calls on this leader.”

Ms Ali also claimed this was a “systematic targeting” as Ms Tabuya was earlier removed from her position as Leader of Government Business in Parliament.

She said Ms Tabuya’s votes were second only to the Prime Minister and none of the three Deputy Prime Ministers came near the number of votes she secured.

“And this is how she is being treated because she doesn’t conform. Women leaders must, and this is a women’s rights issue, play dumb in front of men. It’s a boys’ club.

“You must dress a particular way and you have to keep smiling at the men, and as long as you do that, you are OK.”

She said many women also tended to “dumb themselves down”, which was a drawback of a patriarchal society like ours.

On Monday, The People’s Alliance had announced the removal of Ms Tabuya from her post as deputy leader, as allegations about her personal misconduct had brought disrepute to the party.