Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation Rosy Akbar says 64% of women have experienced violence from an intimate partner in the country and only 3.6% report the matter to Police.
She highlighted this at the opening of the Masculinity, Gender and Non-Violence Training which was organised by Transcend Oceania.
Akbar says she is not presenting the statistics to put pressure on women to report the matter because they know there are many reasons why women do not report to Police.
However, she says these cases should be reported because it is a crime and it must stop.
Akbar says a lot of pressure are put on women to not bring their complaints to Police and it is not fair.
She says we can do better to improve the experience of women reporting to Police and they need the support of services and the community to change mind sets before women will feel confident to shine the light on this hidden shame.
Akbar adds this training has been strategically developed to work with men and boys in Fiji particularly in ensuring that there is an understanding of the social construction of gender as a major contributing factor to toxic masculinity and its impact on women.
She adds the concept of masculinity is a major factor that reinforces male behavior normalizing demeaning and the violent treatment of women.
The Minister has challenged the participating men to repeal the desire for control and instead embrace to support women to eliminate gender-based violence.
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