Vanuatu's missing women
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What happens when a country has an all-male parliament? Vanuatu is one of only three countries on the planet with zero female elected representatives. We find out why only men win votes in Vanuatu and what that means for the economy. Next year the country heads to the polls, so will anything change? Yasmin Bjornum of online platform Sista and Hilda Lini, from a newly-formed all-female political party, give us their view.
Photo: Hilda Lini, an organiser with Vanuatu’s women’s party. Credit: Chris Morgan, BBC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | performers singing on stage at a playhouse in Port Valle |
| 0:09.8 | the capital of the Pacific Island Nation of Vanuatu. |
| 0:14.5 | The Pacific may conjure up images of sandy beaches in a leisurely pace of life. |
| 0:19.5 | But the reality is very different. Vanuatu, |
| 0:23.1 | like much of the Pacific, is poor and isolated. For women here, these problems are compounded |
| 0:28.9 | by a patriarchal system of village rule that has carried over into modern politics. I'm Vivienne |
| 0:35.4 | Nunes and in today's Business Daily, I meet some of the women here |
| 0:38.8 | fighting for change and hoping to help improve economic prospects through better representation |
| 0:44.3 | in government. |
| 0:45.6 | All these political parties are run by men and then they decide who becomes the candidates, |
| 0:51.4 | them and then the parliament is dominated by trust and men. |
| 0:55.7 | And again, it comes down to custom and respect where I do believe that having the older |
| 1:00.2 | ladies at the forefront of the woman's movement will allow for the men to be able to be more receptive |
| 1:05.1 | to the goal. |
| 1:07.0 | Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:19.0 | The Pletka is a bit of the... Business Daily from the BBC. The play put on by one small bag theatre group is lively and colourful, |
| 1:21.2 | but the message is a serious one. |
| 1:24.3 | It's designed to educate women about their rights in the face of economic and social inequality |
| 1:26.8 | and astonishing rates of violence. |
| 1:33.5 | The statistics are not encouraging. In fact, Vanuatu is one of only three countries in the entire world |
| 1:42.1 | with no women in Parliament, alongside Papua New Guinea |
| 1:45.5 | and Yemen. That means not one of Anuatu's 52 MPs is female. It's pretty hard to find |
... |
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