Women in the Public service in Bougainville: Experiences and Perspectives

The findings show that in the Bougainville public service there is a lack of knowledge about and commitment to gender equity and a tendency to assume that women are not as suited to paid work as men. Women placed a strong emphasis on the need for further training and education to progress their careers but reported that a lack of resources and discrimination meant this was rarely forthcoming. There was a general lack of clarity about discrimination and harassment, including in relation to whether or not there were policies and procedures to address these experiences in the workplace. The analysis of the formal policies for supporting gender equity reveals considerable emphasis on addressing the formal ways in which women experience gender inequality, and little to no emphasis on the informal ways in which women experience gender inequality. The risk of such a heavy emphasis on the formal over the informal is that a range of formal documents get written and enabling structures are developed, but these structures make little to no difference to behaviour change. Meanwhile, the informal ways in which women experience gender inequality are so resilient and pervasive that existing power structures are able to continue in the face of what appear to be enabling formal policy environments.