Empowerment of women is the empowerment of a society and for Fiji to prosper and become sustainable, people must give a great deal of importance to the economic empowerment of women and girls.
These were the sentiments made by Assistant Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation Sashi Kiran while delivering her speech at the launch of the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM) research report Beyond 33 per cent: The Economic Empowerment of Fiji Women and Girls on Wednesday.
She said for women to grow, people must first acknowledge the systematic barriers faced by women in the country.
“Some of the challenges highlighted in the report today showed that females only form 34 per cent of our labour force with large numbers of them having low income,” Ms Kiran said.
“Fijian women were saving less and employed in less secured jobs compared with men. “And we saw during the pandemic when the entire hotel industry most people had lost their jobs, something like 70 to 80 per cent were women.
“We didn’t realise the number of women in low-paying jobs in the hotel industry and associated industries had to lose their jobs,” she said.
Ms Kiran said the Government acknowledged that much work was needed to be done to increase women’s participation in economy and welcomed the launch of the report compiled by FWRM and Professor Wadan Narsey.
She thanked FWRM and Prof Narsey for the report, reiterating that women’s economic empowerment is crucial to our society. “Increasing women’s participation in the economy creates positive changes for women and ripple effects for the nation overall.
“However, the existence of systematic and structural barriers faced by women in Fiji hinders holistic opportunities and participation of women in the economy,” she said.
