Pacific Women in Politics: Gender Quota Campaigns in the Pacific Islands by Kerryn Baker

Abstract

Reviewed by: Pacific Women in Politics: Gender Quota Campaigns in the Pacific Islands by Kerryn Baker Monique Mironesco Pacific Women in Politics: Gender Quota Campaigns in the Pacific Islands, by Kerryn Baker. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. isbn hardback: 9780824872595, 212 pages, illustrations, references, and index. Hardback, us$68.00. The Pacific Islands context is rife with opportunities for analysis of women’s participation in contemporary politics. Kerryn Baker’s Pacific Women in Politics: Gender Quota Campaigns in the Pacific Islands, the latest addition to the University of Hawai‘i Press’s Topics in the Contemporary Pacific Series, edited by Brij Lal and Jack Corbett, makes an important contribution in this area through an exploration of the diversity of recent gender quota campaigns in Sāmoa, Papua New Guinea, Bougainville, and France’s Pacific territories. As noted by the editors, Baker offers a theoretical approach to exploring the merits of the different gender quota campaigns and a “how-to” overview of the processes that brought the campaigns to fruition (viii). Using interviews with campaign participants, Baker outlines the paths followed in each setting, participants’ varying definitions of “success,” and the distinctive outcomes of each. Significantly, she brings gender quota literature into conversation with the Pacific Islands context. Baker also successfully examines the colonial legacies of these four geographic spaces in terms of traditional gender roles and cultural norms in order to argue for increased women’s participation in the political sphere. That said, the book’s methods and data section is lacking, and the author does not sufficiently situate herself in relation to her interviewees. While the depth and breadth of the interviews are significant, the absence of analysis of the researcher’s positionality is problematic. The book’s central chapters consider the geographical and political contexts in which, and processes by which, each gender quota campaign was organized and, where successful, implemented, with one chapter devoted to each. Chapter 2 examines the path toward and successful implementation of Sāmoa’s parliamentary gender quota campaign, which called for 10 percent of seats to be reserved for women prior to the 2016 election. Baker begins the chapter by analyzing historical changes to the fa‘amatai system, the extended family unit headed by a chosen matai (chief or titleholder), explaining that women’s complementary gender roles and influence within Sāmoa’s feagaiga (sacred covenant) were diminished as a result of colonial and missionary influences (31). She argues that women’s lack of participation in contemporary Samoan politics can be attributed to the matai title system and the notion that women are more risk averse than men when it comes to seeking public office (34). Sāmoa’s parliamentary gender quota campaign sought to address this disparity, and it received a boost when it gained the support of Prime Minister Tuila‘epa in 2011. The varying involvement of international nongovernmental organizations is a running theme in all four case studies. In Sāmoa, those who opposed the gender quota campaign argued that outside involvement evoked colonial hegemony and that anything supported by international nongovernmental organizations [End Page 287] should be avoided. Ultimately, Baker argues that political stability in Sāmoa resulting from the prime minister’s leadership was instrumental to the gender quota system’s passing. Chapter 3 is distinguished from the other chapters by its focus on Papua New Guinea’s “unsuccessful” gender quota campaigns for nominated and reserved legislative seats. Contemporary Papua New Guinean culture ascribes gender norms that perpetuate male-dominated public political participation (64). Notably, opposition to the gender quota campaign painted women’s political participation as promulgated by urban, elite, educated women—a demographic sometimes portrayed as less culturally “authentic” than rural women and as promoting a Western approach to women’s political participation. Although the gender quota campaign prior to the 2012 general election was not ultimately successful (it was not adopted), Baker demonstrates that the political actors she interviewed did not all characterize the campaign as a failure. Rather, they found success in women’s overall increased participation in Papua New Guinea’s national political decision-making process as a result of the campaign. Chapter 4 situates Bougainville’s gender quota campaign...