THERE is still an obvious gender gap in senior leadership roles across all sectors in Fiji, said Women Entrepreneurs Business Council (WEBC) chair Vera Chute.
In her opening speech at WEBC’s annual Women Invigorating the Nation 2025 (WIN 2025) Convention, which began in Suva yesterday, Ms Chute outlined some of the achievements that WEBC has made since the previous WIN conventions with the gender gap issue still very relevant and measures that will now be implemented to improve on it.
“The Convention recognized the need for increased women representation in boards and decision-making bodies for the benefit of all women,” Ms Chute said.
“We recently concluded a scoping study with the Asian Development Bank for two programmes we will be implementing, ie: the Leadership and Board Readiness Programme and Regional Network of Women entrepreneurial organisations where we can come together to share experiences, support cross country start up and share economic opportunities, eg: Samoa supplying virgin coconut oil to the Bodyshop.
“The next step is to look for funding to help implement these programmes.”
Ms Chute also shared the outcomes of a survey WEBC carried out last year through the support of the International Labour Organisation to help inform diversity, equity and inclusion targets.
“The ILO survey last year revealed that while companies take action to promote equality, diversity and inclusion mainly in promotion and recruitment, 62per cent (of respondents) felt that there was a lack of support in supporting women through maternity leave, parental leave, career breaks, expectant mothers, elder care, child care, caring for sick family members, sexual harassment, targets for gender balance in recruitment and management.
“One other question on what are the barriers for women to rise to senior and top management in Fiji revealed interesting results where majority (83per cent), felt that there was a lack of flexible work solutions, that the masculine corporate culture was a barrier, there were insufficient general or line management experience provided, women have more family responsibilities than men which hindered their progress, there was no strategy for the retention of skilled women, there are few role models for women, roles were assigned by society to men and women, there was a lack of leadership training for women, management was generally viewed as a man’s job.”
Ms Chute said diversity, equity and inclusion targets fought to be central to corporate strategy and incorporated in annual reporting requirements.
ABOUT 200 delegates attended WIN 2025 when it opened yesterday and discussions from the convention will be used by WEBC to help drive its agenda on the empowerment of women entrepreneurs.
WEBC is one of the nine councils under the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation, the nation’s apex private sector body.
NOTE: This article was first published in the print edition of the Fiji Times dated MARCH 29, 2025.
