Former journalist Kairao Bauea makes her political debut as a candidate in Wednewsday’s Kiribati national elections, advocating for a greater role for women in politics to bring a much-needed change.
Bauea is standing in Kiribati’s largest electorate, the capital city South Tarawa, and is one of 18 women running nationally, more than twice as many as in the 2020 elections.
The 47-year-old mother of 10 believes she is ready to step up to a bigger household beyond her home – the parliament of Kiribati, also known as the Maneaba ni Maungatabu.
“Women have power, perhaps not ‘man power’, but the power to change things for the better,” she told BenarNews.
Despite gradual advances in women’s political participation in Kiribati, their representation in the Maneaba remains low. In the last term, only four out of eight women candidates were elected.
They accounted for only 8.6 percent of the 45-seat parliament, despite females numbering 68,000 in Kiribati, or 51 percent of the population. Previous elections saw three women MPs elected in 2007, four in 2011, and three in 2015, when there were also 18 candidates.
Kiribati consists of three low-lying coral atoll chains. Half the population of 116,000 lives in the capital, considered one of the most densely populated places on earth.
The opening paragraph of the UN’s last periodic country review in 2020 said, “Kiribati is a strong patriarchal society, and the culture is a great challenge for many human rights conventions, especially gender equality.” It reports the country has one of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the Pacific.
While IMF gender equality data from 2023 shows i-Kiribati women have better educational and health outcomes than men, their labour participation rate remains low, including as parliamentarians.
Other women candidates this year include former public servants, business women, lawyers, a technical expert and an activist. Most are standing as independents.
Only two agreed to be interviewed by BenarNews, some declined, one said she feared being seen to be running against the ruling party, which a foreign media appearance would validate.
As a former journalist, Bauea is not surprised and said the current media landscape is heavily stifled by the previous government, also silencing women’s voices. She stresses the need for independent journalism and free speech as the cornerstone for any functioning democracy.
“Our media system is vital for ensuring transparency and holding our leaders accountable,” Bauea said. “It allows us to learn from our mistakes and be more effective in our service to our people.”
At independence from Britain in 1979, women were granted the vote and Fenua Tamuera was the first female MP elected in 1990.
Despite notable strides in female political leadership – such as Teima Onorio as vice president in Anote Tong’s government, Tangariki Reete as the first female Speaker in the last four-year parliamentary term, and Tessie Lambourne as opposition leader – their representation in parliament remains limited.
“The Pacific Islands region has the lowest levels of women’s parliamentary representation in the world, and in the national elections held so far this year (Tuvalu and Solomon Islands) the number of women in parliament has gone backwards,” Pacific research fellow Kerryn Baker at the Australian National University told BenarNews.
Baker predicts only three or four female MPs will be elected this year.
“This would be a reasonably good result in the difficult context of elections in the Pacific, but it still means that women’s voices are disproportionately under-represented in Kiribati politics,” she said.
Elections in Kiribati have had little to no scrutiny by Commonwealth or Pacific Islands Forum election observers. The media have not been informed of any observer missions deployed for this poll.
In the last two decades efforts to encourage women into politics, including with “women’s practice parliaments” in the Maneaba funded by the UNDP and foreign donors, has seen only slow progress.
The portfolio of Minister for Women in the incumbent government of President Taneti Maamau was held by a man, Martin Moreti, who was unavailable for an interview due to campaigning in remote communities.
Pelenise Alofa is recognised for her climate justice work with regional and international NGOs and was instrumental in campaigns leading to the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. A leading human rights activist and former head of the Kiribati Climate Action Network, she is running for the Banaba parliamentary seat.
Reflecting on her former life as a protester outside parliament, Alofa said her time had come to drive real change from within the policy-making chambers.
Her motivation is very personal, rooted in her family’s displacement during the 1970s phosphate mining boom from the island of Banaba to Rabi in Fiji. Over the past decade, Banaba’s acute water and food shortages for its remaining 300 residents have deepened, due to what she said is an inadequate and delayed response from the government.
If elected, Alofa has promised to provide a reliable fresh water supply system and upgraded transport and service links.
The first round of the parliamentary elections begins Wednesday Aug. 14, with 115 candidates standing. The ones that don’t win an absolute majority go into a second round, scheduled for Aug. 19. The nation then goes back to the polls in the last quarter of the year to elect its president.
Bauea is campaigning on youth unemployment, land ownership, for sports funding to promote community health and believes more women’s representation in parliament is vital.
“Women naturally bring compassion and understanding to issues, which is essential for effective governance – unlike men who are self-centred, who take hardline approaches to people and issues,” Bauea said.
Chloe Karea, 27, a travel agent in Tarawa, who recently returned home to Kiribati from studies in Britain, was disappointed to find she could not register for Wednesday’s vote because of identification requirements.
“It’s a really important election and could be pivotal because we have a lot of activity with China. It will show the people’s opinion on what has been happening,” she said in a telephone interview.
Voting is not compulsory in Kiribati, and Wednesday’s ballot is the first of two rounds of voting for members of parliament, to be followed by the vote for president.
“A lot of female candidates and lawyers have put themselves up for election,” Karea added.
Kiribati was left without a functioning appeals court system in 2022 after the government suspended all three Court of Appeal judges and the chief justice.
A popular government policy of paying a monthly allowance to people of voting age who do not work, and a subsidy on the cost of copra, could win over some voters, Karea said.
The election “will let the people say if they are satisfied or not”, said Robert Karora, project manager for the Kiribati Climate Action Network.
“We definitely need a change – so that climate change issues are taken seriously,” he said in a telephone interview.
Under past governments, Kiribati had been a prominent campaigner on the global stage for climate change issues, he said.
Maamau’s government has backed deep sea mining, an issue that put it at odds with environmental groups.
The Kiribati government did not respond to a request for comment.
