The Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) is pleased to share the findings of a gender stocktake conducted in six Pacific Islands countries in 2009-2010.
The goal of the stocktake was to assess each national government's capacity for gender mainstreaming (a term that refers to ensuring that gender perspectives and attention to gender equality are included in all activities undertaken) and to identify potential areas of strategic intervention to strengthen such capacity. The country reports are available on SPC's website at www.spc.int/en/featured-publications.html (click on 'Divisional Publications').The stocktake is part of an SPC initiative undertaken in collaboration with national governments with support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the UN Development Fund for Women (UN Women, previously UNIFEM). It is being carried out in phases throughout the Pacific region in response to a call from Pacific Island ministers responsible for gender equality and the advancement of women for support to strengthen the institutional capacity of governments to meet their stated commitments to gender equality.
SPC's initiative first assesses whether mechanisms, policies and resources are in place that would enable gender mainstreaming across government programmes. In the second part of the initiative, SPC collaborates with national governments and other development partners in the design and implementation of concrete, evidence-based strategies for enhancing this enabling environment. Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, and Tonga were the first six countries to undertake this exercise and initiatives customised for each country are already being implemented based on the recommendations of the gender stocktake reports.