The Young Women Parliamentary Group (YWPG) is embarking on a project to find out voters’ behavior in the country when it comes to electing a women.
This comes as the election day is just a week away.
In an interview, the principal civic officer of the national parliament Marisa Pepa, said they have engaged Youth@ Work to carry out this study.
“This is a first ever local survey on voters’ behavior towards women candidates YWPG will conduct,” she said.
This survey will be conducted in Central Honiara Constituency where 3 women will be contesting.
There are few studies conducted by outside organizations on this subject, but much of what we know is just from hear say and popular beliefs, nothing valid or in a form of data.
Over the years women have tried all kinds of avenue to get to parliament.
Millions of aid money spent on training potential women leaders over the years which to some extent helped women become leaders in other fields, but not to Parliament.
YWPG wants to find out the factors or the reasons on how and why voters vote for men and not women.
From the results of the survey, YWPG will be able to get a clear picture on what is actually happening and why.
She said better strategy would be developed to help women get to Parliament.
The study area is just a small proportion of the country’s population, but it will give us a snapshot of voters behavior towards women candidates.
A local consultant, Ms Karlyn Tekulu has been engaged to oversee this project. “We are thankful to SPC and Youth@ Work for the support in providing the youth interns to work with us.”
Among the 400 plus national candidates 26 are women, what are their chances of winning a seat? Let us have a quick reflection of the past elections, 1993 10 women contested, and 1 won. 1997, 14 women contested, 2001, 14 women, 2006, 26 women, 2010 25 women none of these women made it to Parliament.
The data shown here is totally the opposite of what people are saying. Generally women are seen as leaders but when it comes to voting very few casts their ballot paper for a woman.
By ELLIOT DAWEA
