Young Women and Leadership by Katrina Lee-Koo & Lesley Pruitt

Author:Katrina Lee-Koo & Lesley Pruitt [Lee-Koo, Katrina & Pruitt, Lesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780429523601
Goodreads: 48930484
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

4 Building inclusive young women’s leadership in the Pacific

Spaces for change

Jane Alver

Introduction

Recent research suggests young women across Asia and the Pacific lead in ways that fundamentally challenge traditional and dominant modes of leadership (as flagged by Pruitt and Lee Koo in the introduction to this book). The rise of self-created spaces for young women and girls as leaders of social movements in the Pacific has, until now, had too little attention in social movement scholarship. In the Pacific region formal decision-making traditionally takes place between states or between elder men. Wider civil society actors often find they are excluded or ignored (Interview #17 Suva, November 2016).

This chapter explores the spaces for young women’s leadership participation in Pacific feminist civil society. While ‘spaces’ could mean a physical space or an online space, or presence where participation is possible, here I focus on physical spaces. Rather than waiting to be heard or ‘invited’ into existing formal decision-making spaces, young women in the Pacific are creating their own spaces to lead and support other young women, and they are also receiving some support from women of other generations. However, recent empirical research with young Pacific women has revealed that often decision-making opportunities are closed either due to a perceived lack of experience or due to norms about respect for elders.

Women’s civil society has worked to build networks and leadership opportunities among young women and girls, but can Pacific young women feminists speak and be heard in building and sustaining a Pacific social movement for gender equality? This chapter explores the ways in which young women demonstrate and develop leadership capacity in civil society, while highlighting broader barriers to their leadership. This chapter focuses on young women’s leadership, using Pacific regional activism at the 2016 inaugural Pacific Feminist Forum (PFF) as a case study.1 This case study was chosen as an unstudied site the organisers have aimed to make intergenerational and intersectional from its design through to its delivery. The Forum pushed the boundaries of who is considered a leader by exemplifying the capacities of the young women and girls to lead, for example by including sessions led by girls as young as 12.

I draw on the Pacific Feminist Charter for Change and over 30 interviews with participants and organisers of the Pacific Feminist Forum, participant observation of the Pacific Feminist Forum in 2016, and a young women’s focus group conducted in Fiji in 2016. This builds on the findings outlined in the introduction to this book that young women are challenging dominant approaches to leadership by leading in ways that are based on collaborative, shared, and horizontal power relationships, and in spaces that are often considered informal. This research makes clear the views of young Pacific women as to the challenges they still face and harnesses some practical ideas to support, make space for, and celebrate the leadership of young women. Through analysing this case study, I argue that informal spaces self-generated by social movements can offer innovative approaches including young women in leadership and decision-making.

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