Inspiring inclusion
Including women in Fiji’s development considerations
What does a feminist look like?
THE 2024 International Women’s Day theme, “Inspire Inclusion”, and a brave recommendation by the Great Council of Chiefs Review Team that one of the three provincial seats in the council be occupied by a woman, provides the opportunity for us to explore an unsuccessful attempt some 70 years ago, to include women in development considerations of the then Fijian colony.
George Kingsley Roth, a colonial administrator in Fiji for about 30 years from the 1920s, admitted that indigenous Fijian women were being left behind because there was no data. Roth wanted to understand “Fijian women’s customs” and states in a letter dated February 6th, 1956, to the Colonial Secretary then that men were being “helped” a lot more from an “administrative and economic point of view ... because of the considerable knowledge that we have about men’s customs”.
Roth’s letter followed personal correspondence with a social anthropology, Professor Meyer Fortes of Cambridge whose student, Jean Pratt, was about to graduate and was interested in a career in “colonial welfare work”. The correspondence on the subject went on for almost a year, three months of which was just waiting for a response from the London-based Colonial Social Science Research Council, to which Roth had written for some funding. Roth told the council secretary, a Mrs E Chilver: “Our recorded knowledge of Fijian custom is perhaps little more than half complete: having generally been collected by men students, it has omitted most of the customs of Fijian women and these customs are thus not available for use in administration to the advantage of their sex...”
On June 7th, a letter from Pratt informs Roth that she’d been awarded a scholarship (Goldsmith Company) for her research. To supplement the Goldsmith award for an initial two years’ work, Roth asked the colonial administration if it was willing to provide £1200.00. The Finance Committee responds on June 27th that it was “not prepared” to use colony fund to supplement a scholarship and advised Roth to seek “the views of the Fijian Affairs board on the subject...”. The latter sounded the death knell of Roth’s attempt at including half the colony in (economic) development.
By July 16th, Roth informs Mrs Chilver that a study into Fijian women’s customs would not be “acceptable and therefore not be supported by certain senior Fijians, whose prejudices in this regard, despite my best endeavours, I have been unable to overcome”. Implicit in Roth’s parting paragraph is his absolute loss at the attitude he was met with. He was in “shock” and “disappointed” adding “I remain quite convinced after my long experience in Fiji of the value that the proposed study could have brought in promoting the general welfare of Fijian women”.
On July 31st, Roth informs Pratt and Forte that “Although I have had further oral discussions with the parties concerned, I’m afraid I have not been successful in convincing them of the value to the progress of Fijian women that a study such as that of Miss Pratt could have afforded us”.
What could inclusion look like?
In retrospect, while we risked an outsider anthropological lens with Pratt (Mead comes to mind though she was American, a cultural anthropologist with an area of study that was bound to confront!), baseline data of that period would’ve been incredible for women voices are otherwise historically absent except for the colonist’s gaze.
Retrospect also affords us the opportunity to look to the past, consider the impacts of decisions and actions then to determine options that will yield better results for us as a people today. The Review Team recommendation is not an insult to members of the GCC or its support machinaries. It is a nod to women’s participation at decision-making tables because of the value they add to discussions and solutions. Recommendation 7.4 also speaks to a key question the review team was tasked with ie relevance.
The GCC Review Team suggests that the GCC and its supporting machinaries “must establish pathways for the inclusion of women in key leadership positions at all levels of Fijian society. The GCC should also look to promote women’s access to resources and opportunities for development”. Most importantly, the Team suggests that the Bose Vanua should select the provincial representatives to the GCC “through a fair, transparent and robust nomination and selection process. Furthermore, respondents suggested the following selection criteria be considered for members in the GCC: have served in his/her province, district; have had some level of formal education; for members — must be formally installed as liuliu ni Yavusa, Mataqali; and embodies ITaukei values and practices ethical leadership.”
Inspiring inclusion
Behaviour change is possible. It can be as personal as reconfiguring your internal biases as Jope Tarai’s Rethinking the Fijian Man suggests or at national level. Roth obviously went against the grain in his attempts to understand Fijian women’s customs. Roth then, and the GCC Review Team now, bring home the concept of allyship and a key feminist principle: inclusion.
Respect is key for true ‘inclusion’. Disrespect often means a devaluing of a person and all facets of that person. When that is the starting point of your interaction, it blinds and deafens you to what they’re saying and/or doing. In this context, your disrespect can cost you invaluable skills and knowledge that could have otherwise added value to your trajectory, both in your personal and professional spaces.
It is about power; from our personal spaces to national governance, we have individuals or groups that, among other factors, (can) determine our place in society. When those who traditionally wield power start to demonstrate a willingness to share power and actually begin the process of sharing power, then we have something to start with in digging deeper and putting in the requisite hard yards to finish the process.
It is also about being human: we are all human beings - before the societal categorisations and values ones’ worldview imposes on another. Normalising inclusion can begin with figuring out our complementarity, combing our knowledge and skills to constructively and collectively determine our next steps.