The Fiji Islands has made considerable progress in recognizing gender issues in relation to
legal and human rights and gender and development (GAD), as reflected in legislative and policy
progress since ADB published its Women in Development Country Briefing paper in 1988. The Fiji
Islands has made commitments to eight major international agreements and programs for action on
gender equality and the advancement of women. It has also made commitments to achieving the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including those associated directly or indirectly with the
status of women and gender equality. In 1999 the government endorsed the national Women’s Plan
of Action (WPA) 1999–2008 which has five overall goals for advancing the economic, legal, and
political status of women.
Another important development since 1988 has been growth of civil society organizations
(CSOs), including gender advocacy groups, accompanied by increased effectiveness in their
capacity to influence government policy.
The Government’s mid-term Strategic Development Plan (SDP) was reviewed in 2004 and
provides the basis of an updated SDP to be released in 2005. The first of the Government’s five
major goals for gender and development, which are closely linked to the WPA, is “to mainstream
gender perspectives, issues and concerns in the planning process.” However, the SDP and the 2004
mid-term review (SDP-MTR) do not mainstream gender as a cross-sector and crosscutting issue,
and there are no specific sector gender goals, key result areas (KRAs), or key performance
indicators (KPIs) outside those associated with goals for social development and social welfare.
The 2004 SDP-MTR weakened rather than strengthened a number of the original SDP policy
objectives for GAD.
Responsibility for the gender policy goals, KRAs, and KPIs in the SDP are assigned to the
Ministry of Women (MOW), a department in the Ministry of Women, Social Welfare and Poverty
Alleviation (MWSWPA). The structural problem here is that the MOW is not a policy agency but a
line department, providing community-based development services to mainly Fijian women.
Despite this, the department had made determined efforts to implement the WPA, despite the
constraints of weak intersector linkages at high levels to facilitate mainstreaming and other WPA
goals. MOW currently lacks the financial and human resources to promote and effectively facilitate
the implementation of government policy on gender mainstreaming.
The Government may wish to reconsider the institutional arrangements provided under the
SDP to achieve more effective structural and macroeconomic strategies to address poverty and
gender as cross-cutting and intersector policy and planning issues. For example, gender-specific
policy objectives for “improved participation and empowerment” specified in the Government’s
proposed framework for poverty reduction are for “equal opportunities and gender” linked to
micro-level programs to implement the WPA, including access to training and credit, to be
implemented by the Ministries of WSWPA, Youth, and Education. Overall, gender mainstreaming
processes to achieve the Government’s commitments are still not well integrated into the
government institutional structure, planning, and budgetary processes, despite ADB technical assistance to support government policies and implementation of the WPA in two sectors. Further
support is needed to strengthen government capacity to implement its policies on GAD.
As this Country Gender Assessment (CGA) indicates, despite the considerable progress
made, the gaps in the implementation or achievement of government policy on gender are
numerous, and need to be addressed in institutional arrangements and in the planning and
budgeting process. These cross-sector issues are identified in the CGA and are linked to the overall
ADB country strategy with recommendations for action.