34% of the labour force in Fiji are women - PS Women

It was revealed today that even though more women are graduating from universities than men, women make up only 34 percent of the labour force.

While revealing this during the International Rural Women's Day Celebrations and Pinktober Awareness in Sawani Village, Naitasiri, Permanent Secretary for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation, Jennifer Poole says this is interesting because women are graduating in higher numbers than men.

She says this shows women do not tend to stay in the formal economy for long.

Poole says the pandemic’s devastating consequences on women and girls is even graver than its impact on their male counterparts.

She says as markets fall and businesses close, millions of women’s jobs have disappeared.

She adds women and girls play an essential role in food systems from production, to processing, preparation, consumption, and distribution of food as well as in securing household and community nutrition.

The Permanent Secretary says discriminatory gender norms and practices and their disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work, results in unequal access to food and heightened experience of hunger, malnutrition, under nutrition and food insecurity.

She says women and girls face greater vulnerability and exposure to disasters, yet women remain largely ignored and their capacities unleveraged in conventional resilience building processes. Poole adds that it is critical that at the community level women are involved in all platforms of decision making, to ensure that their needs, issues and concerns are considered.

The Permanent Secretary says this International Day of Rural Women is a key moment to galvanize action by all stakeholders to support rural women and girls to not only rebuild their lives after COVID-19 and disasters but increase their resilience to be better prepared to face future crises.