Fiji wants village law on fishing by pregnant women enforced
Updated 1 June 2012, 10:29 AEST
Fiji’s Ministry of iTaukei Affairs wants a village law preventing women from fishing once they are more than five months pregnant to be more strictly enforced.
Fiji wants village law on fishing by pregnant women enforced
Permanent secretary Savenaca Kaunisela says the law is often not followed and he has told district officials to enforce it.
Mr Kaunisela wants men to look after the women, and do more work, when they are pregnant.
But the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre manager does not think the customary law will work.
ALI: Because we’ve had it before, this is actually not a law, this is a village by-law kind of thing, it hasn’t been legislated. So actually enforcement will be difficult, I mean it can be challenged. But women do so much work, particularly in the rural areas there’s so much work inside the house, outside the house, fishing etc., and fishing actually supplements the daily food supply of the families. So I just find it a bit difficult to believe that women actually will be sitting around when they’re five months pregnant and after they give birth and not do strenuous work like going out fishing, collecting firewood and things like that. I mean one of the aspects for me is the women’s right to work, to do what she wants to do to eke out a living and so on. And women are not sick when they’re pregnant, but because of the overload of work this could be a good thing if worked out properly, if it is also who is allocated the work? More women in the family, or are the men going to share the workload? So those things have to be put in place, we can’t just make a blanket law or by-law of this nature or a village policy of something of this nature and say it’s going to work.
COUTTS: Will it be infringing on human rights as well and also contravenes the UN Convention of the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and Children?
ALI: Yes of course definitely. But if women make a choice, and I think a lot of women it should be really, but they worry if the work is not done, if there’s not enough food in the house and so on. So they worry a lot about those things. But definitely you can’t stop people from working just because they’re pregnant.
COUTTS: And when you say the laws didn’t work previously and probably won’t again, as you’ve fairly well described because women’s contribution to the household income is paramount and they need to keep working?
ALI: Yes, yes, definitely, they need to and I do these workshops throughout the rural communities and my organisation does, and everywhere we go when we ask them to list women’s work, it goes from one column to the next and so on. And when you look at men’s work, and actually when men are in these workshops also, when you look at it there’s actually a lot of good men feel quite ashamed for the little amount of work that they do, both inside and outside the home.
COUTTS: Is there some goodwill attached to this, the law, the decree is trying to take women’s best interests at heart so that they can go full-term and without complications? Or is it simply harking back to men’s rule and whatever men say is the way that it will go?
ALI: I believe there has been a concern about women dying in childbirth and babies being born not alive and so on, so I think there has been some concerns raised. And this law, so-called law is coming out, out of this, the protectionist mode for women, and I believe perhaps the authorities are thinking that way rather than women stay in the home and the men will go out and work. But again while the authorities might have women’s health as a concern and it’s coming out of that, actually people within the communities also need to be educated about that, rather than taking back the small gains that women have made determining how and where and when they will work.
COUTTS: Well the Ministry of iTaukei Affairs wants a village preventing women from fishing once they’re more than five months pregnant, so they’re going to have to consult I guess with the men and the elders of the villages. Do you know if that process has happened and what kind of support there might be for this?
ALI: Not really, I don’t believe that consultation has happened but this is at the provincial meeting level these things have been declared. Hopefully the consultations will work, we definitely because we work in a lot of villages, we work with a lot of village chiefs, and some of them are advocates, and I’m sure that they will sort of understand what is happening within a gender perspective rather than the very patriarchal perspective. But again as I said, those consultations need to take place so that they can understand or the roles allocated within the family, and not just other women taking on the burden of a pregnant woman. That the men are also sharing and things like that, because one of the things I have seen in Fiji over the years, is that a lot of the work that men used to do in the villages the women are in addition to their normal work, they are taking back overall.
COUTTS: Why is that?
ALI: Well a lot of men are going out to work elsewhere or moving to the cities and so on. But a lot of it also, this is from women’s experiences and men also tell us that there is a lot of kava drinking, so the kava drinking goes on till early morning, quite late, and the sleeping time increases in the daytime. So the women take up the rest of the burden.
COUTTS: Now I want to move on to another issue if I may Shamima Ali, and that’s the constitutional reform, the constitutional process, how’s that going in your opinion and are women stepping forward and having their say?
ALI: Well we actually some of us are still working out how and whether we will participate. But I think the other women through the Women’s Forum are stepping up and demanding temporary special measures and so on. But I don’t know what will actually go into the submission, but some of us are already in conversation with the authorities and with the commissioners.
COUTTS: So why might some women such as yourself consider not having an input?
ALI: Well I think as a human rights activist and uniting some people who think just not the women but the men also, is like whether this whole process is legitimate, we’re still thinking about whether it’s a legitimate process. So we are still in discussions, we’re talking to the powers that be, the authorities, the Attorney General’s office and so on. We’re talking to them asking relevant questions and so on. But it’s the whole issue of the legitimacy of the process, that is what is worrying some of us.
Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Shamima Ali, Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre manager
Mortgage Deal Is Close, and May Not Offer Much Immunity
George Zornick on January 27, 2012 – 1:19pm ET
The federal government is closer than ever to a deal with five major banks over mortgage fraud practices—and, with some exceptions, the emerging details may hearten progressives who feared banks would get off the hook.
The White House provided an outline to the Huffington Post, and it appears that immunity has largely been removed from the deal—except in the area of state prosecutions against robo-signing. (Robo-signing is when banks use fake signatures, or stipulate to documents they hadn’t read or that didn’t exist, in order to foreclose on a home).
According to the Huffington Post story, banks would not receive immunity in the following areas:
1. Criminal liability. 2. Tax liability 3. Fair lending, fair housing, or any other civil rights claim. 4. Federal Housing Finance Agency or the GSEs [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] 5. CFPB claims for the period after they came into existence in July 2011 6. SEC claims 7. National Credit Union Association Claims 8. FDIC claims 9. Federal Reserve Board claims 10. MERS claims
State-level robo-signing prosecutions are the simplest form of fraud to prove, however, and the banks wouldn’t face any more investigations. But they would have to fork over $25 billion to help homeowners who were either wrongfully foreclosed on, or have homes that are underwater as part of the settlement.
With almost everything federal still on the table (though the White House says only that a “vast majority” of securitization and origination claims will be exempted), this is not a terrific deal for the banks—especially given that the administration is ramping up federal investigations with a new task force headed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. “I think it is fair to give [New York Attorney General] Eric Schneiderman and the other progressive attorneys general a lot of credit for holding the line,” a source intimate with the negotiations told theHuffington Post. “This is a big victory for them.”
That assumes the new taskforce will be aggressive and effective, which nobody is yet fully confident about. (Delaware AG Beau Biden voiced concerns about that this week).
Then two serious hurdles must still be cleared: one, will state attorneys general—particularly those who already have robo-signing investigations underway or in planning stages—agree to this deal?
And now, with the limited immunity, will the banks agree? Mike Lux, of Progressive Strategies, has reported that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is not happy with the deal and may walk away.
A lot of details remain to be worked out or disclosed, but if JPMorgan Chase is threatening to walk, it means the administration is indeed playing hardball.
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