Part 2 — Analysis and Reflection

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Development and peace

Women demand peace and development, not tokenism

Emilia Rokotuivuna

Emilia Rokotuivuna presented the paper from which this article is taken, on the subject of "Women, development and peace", at the 1985 Australian- Pacific Women's Peace Conference in Sydney, Australia. The conference was hosted by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

The knowledge I have gained of the Pacific region (chiefly the island nations and territories of the South Pacific Ocean) came through my work with women in the region, and my involvement in the movement for a nuclear-free, independent Pacific. A strong base for this learning has been my experience as an activist in my own country, Fiji.

At the end of the United Nations' decade of women, on the theme of "Equality, development and peace", we might ask some questions — as a means of reviewing our situations and working out strategies for the future:

• Has our understanding of our position as women —• our roles, status, participation in the affairs of home, nation and work — been enhanced?

• How have we, as women, defined development, participated in development processes, and benefited from those processes?

• What do we mean by "peace"? What are the benefits of peace processes for us, and how can we have our own impact on peace processes?

"Development", to me, means improvement of material conditions of life and the changing of ideologies to eliminate oppressive situations. Not only do the women of the region need better economic, social and political situations, but we also need to deal with the mental attitudes and social practices which render women less than equal to men.

I will give a few illustrations of the situation of women in the region. These figures are fairly crude, but they do give an indication of the facts.

Women make up roughly half the region's population, and 31 per cent of the paid labour force. Of course, this varies among countries; for instance, the 1976 Fiji census classified two-thirds of its women as economically inactive. In Papua New Guinea, where the government is the biggest employer, women made up 18 per cent of the civil service in 1978. About 42 per cent of

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professional and technical workers in the region are women, but most of these are teachers and nurses. In the areas of administration and management, the regional average for women is around nine per cent.

Education: in 1979, 40 per cent of Papua New Guinea primary school enrolments were by girls. The figures for secondary and tertiary education were 32 per cent and 10 per cent respectively. In Fiji, in 1981, girls made up 50 per cent of secondary school enrolments, while at the Fiji Institute of Technology the same year, women made up 38 per cent. However, women were enrolling in hotel and catering or secretarial courses (77 per cent of enrolments) rather than engineering (only 13 per cent of enrolments were by women). In the same year, women constituted only 26 per cent of Fijian students at the University of the South Pacific.

And, of course, women politicians are rare in the region. Data from legal, medical and other fields would give a more comprehensive picture of the status of women in the region; the information I have given does indicate that women lag behind in the processes of development, and have not secured the benefits of development which they are due.

Before continuing, I should say something about the subsistence economy. In rural villages in many Pacific island countries, agriculture is the main economic activity: the people cultivate, fish and hunt for food. Under such an economy, the main producers are women — they work in the plantations, fish, gather firewood and food in the bush... as well as take care of domestic work.

As a result of the UN decade, women in Pacific nations began to make strong statements about the position of women. A couple of governments, including Australia, Papua New Guinea and Samoa, created high-level government offices to deal with women's affairs. Consciousness-raising started, some literature was produced, and radio programmes were encouraged. Between 1980 and 1985, however, the emphasis shifted to practical programmes: health, water supply, credit availability and training. General characteristics which have marked decade of women activities in the region include:

The desire for a united voice of women. This was evidenced by the establishment of national machinery in many countries and the pressure for similar institutions from women in countries where they did not exist. But women paid very little attention to the political relationship between these offices and the state. The visibility of such offices was high, but they were less than effective in influencing government policy and delivering programmes. Women's offices soon became implementors of health and nutrition pro- grammes and other government projects, rather than articulators of and advocates for the position of women. A developmental role replaced the initial political role. Women's offices could be disbanded when the party supporting them lost power, or even at the whim of sitting politicians. What women thought was to be a wedge into the political processes for them became a tool for controlling the activities of women.

Outside impetus for improvement in the position of women in the region. UN agencies, aid agencies and international women's organisations have been major motivating forces. Because of the nature of these bodies' work, they

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have pushed for programmes of economic and social improvement or research, neglecting the political and ideological processes. Some of them may still believe that better economic and social conditions will decrease the domination of women by men. The more serious issue about initiative from abroad is that it tends to form the agenda of women's work in the various countries. The fault lies partly with the funding agencies, but most of the onus for avoiding this problem must fall on the women in the countries.

Lack of impact on the domestic lives of women. Women may now be in the paid labour force, but they add to this work their hours of domestic labour. Their lives are still very much controlled by men — grandfathers, fathers, husbands, brothers, fathers-in-law.

Continuing state control over women's sexuality — through the institution of marriage, medicine, the church, kinship patterns, nuclear families or husbands. In spite of family planning and other developments, a woman's role and status is still very much determined by her reproductive abilities.

In order to improve the position of women in the region, we require a revolution, not reform, because the conditions which oppress women are both ideological and material. I therefore wish to refer to several points which might guide us after Nairobi:

Ideology change. Changing the attitudes of both women and men is an arduous task, but it is absolutely necessary if women are to be equal with men. We have seen that, even in countries where women are economically active and independent, equality with men (in national political processes and parties as well as in the home) is still far off. Programmes aimed at improving health, economic and social situations must be accompanied by political education aimed at changing ideology. We women need to be careful not to defend practices which are oppressive to women just because they are traditional.

Seeing our work as part of a greater development. We need to be involved in the wider political and economic issues in our own countries: for example, if we work in primary health at the village level, we should link this with the village decision-making processes. If we can get women participating at the formal village politics level, we will increase the chances of women becoming aware of their overall situations.

International sisterhood. It would be a welcome change if aid was given for political work — particularly consciousness-raising. I'm banking on the women's groups rather than the big aid agencies for help. Financial assistance could go into research that looks at the ideology of oppression, not just at the participation of women in development.

Let me now turn to peace. Peace can mean a situation under which different social forces resolve their differences without going to war. It can also mean improvement in material conditions. However, it has now come to mean the absence of war and the processes of reducing and eliminating militarism. A few issues underly the rise of militarism in our region:

National "security". This doctrine, popular in Pacific rim states, purports to justify countries arming against invasion. However, the doctrine has become an excuse for military build-up far beyond what's necessary for

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national defence. Centre states may also arm peripheral states in order to defend their spheres of influence. This usually leads to the arms being used against a domestic population — as in the case of The Philippines or Samoza's Nicaragua.

Ideological battle. The particular expression of the battle between "socialism" and capitalism is the cold war between the USA and the USSR. Both view the world in terms of their own strategic interests: the USA regards any state which chooses socialism as a Moscow ally, and the USSR regards states with open or capitalist economies as USA allies. Because this ideological confrontation has such a commanding influence on foreign policy, military intervention is a frequently-used option for the superpowers. The cold war is an added impetus for an increase in armaments in the world.

Capitalism and arms build-up. There is a relationship between the accumulation of capital and the arms industry: the latter is heavily state subsidised because it is lucrative.

Military secrecy. There is low political accountability for "defence" matters. Politicians, their allies, and people in the military and intelligence bodies do not seek the authorisation of the people of their countries before acting. In some cases, even the legitimate political organs, like parliaments, are uninformed. Strategies are plotted, and armaments designed and produced, with very little reference to the people of a given country.

Militarism is not good for development. It creates fear, channels off money that could be used to improve living conditions, and misuses some of the best scientific and technological resources. To implement the peace processes, we need to assert again that:

The best guarantee of national security is equal development — not development along class, ethnic, gender or other interest group lines. Then the defence of a nation becomes the concern of every citizen. When a national military institution arms itself in the absence of visible external threat, this is a fair indication that the ruling class is arming itself against the population.

We need independent, not superpower-oriented, foreign policies. The Pacific countries would enhance peace if they acted in the same way towards both the USA and the USSR.

People of a nation have rights to self-determination: rights to decide on the particular political-economic system they have to live under.

Women have always taken a prominent role in facilitating peace. We should support moves which will help reduce militarism — like the New Zealand prime minister's moves on the ANZUS treaty, the creation of a nuclear-free Pacific zone, the banning of visits by nuclear powered and armed submarines or ships to our ports, and the creation of local nuclear free zones to eliminate transportation of nuclear material through an area or the establishment of nuclear reactors and military bases there. All these military installations, have no doubt about it, will be prime targets in the event of a war.

We must work for peace and the demilitarisation of our region for the sake of ourselves and the generations to come. The dangers of nuclear war are not only prevalent during warfare itself, or even during the following decade. They include the destruction of life for many years into the future.