The over 50 per cent of women graduates does not translate in the formal economy regarding labour participation, says the Minister for Women, Children and Social Protection Lynda Tabuya.

While delivering her statement in Parliament yesterday, she said this disconnect was evident.

“This is all part of the development of the Fiji women’s economic plan that is to look into that, it also includes access to financial resources,” she said.

“The gender transformative institutional capacity development initiative looks at rolling out of gender mainstreaming across ministries and agencies in terms of planning and budgeting and having policies to that effect.

She said there was also a lack of women in leadership roles in both public and private spheres.

“I’d just like to clarify this point Honourable Speaker, clarify to members of the public that there is a difference between gender transformative, the use of those words, and transgender.

“There was some confusion on social media about this, and of course, there were a lot of criticisms about the initiative, but I’d like to clarify that this is not the case.”

She said the report underscored significant achievements in social protection policies .

“We know all our six programs that we currently run are looking at specifically supporting women, the areas of family assistance scheme, the care protection allowance for children, social pension scheme, the rural pregnant mothers’ program, food voucher program, as well as the transport allowance, of course, the disability allowance scheme.

“There are efforts been made, and I thank the line ministries involved, including the Ministry for Trade and Small and Micro Medium Enterprises, where women are becoming the focus of the vision of micro finance for them.”

She also highlighted the high incidence of technology facilitated gender-based violence, and also in the area of women’s health.

“I thank the honourable Minister for Health and his team in their commitment hopefully developing a policy to deal with cervical cancer in Fiji, which is the number one cause of death for women in Fiji.

“Honourable Speaker, going forward, following the submission of this review report, we now anticipate Fiji’s participation at the regional review at the Asia Pacific Ministerial Conference in Thailand from the 19th to 21st November, for which Fiji has been nominated to be the vice chair.

“In preparation for the conference in November, we aim to bring together CSOs, our faith-based organisations and women’s organisations as well, to present the report, Honourable Speaker, the UN Women and I thank the UN Human Fiji multi country office for collaborating with our team in the ministry to prepare for this and our government delegations which Fiji will be part of.”