Transcript
SHAMIMA ALI: It's about maintaining the status quo, the gender roles of men and women, not recognising gender equality. Using Bible verses inappropriately to ensure that women remain in the roles that they've been subjected to. Also the issue of reconciliation, keeping the families together but not doing anything women's lives and the torture and the violence and everything else that they go through in their own homes.
DANIELA MAOATE-COX: So people are taking liberties with the interpretation of Bible verses to support their own beliefs?
SA: Yes that has been an ongoing issue and then sometimes also the whole use of culture and religion so it's almost like they're interchangeable, religion has become part of the culture or some cultural aspects and some traditional practices have become part of religion and mix that up with the patriarchal nature of our societies, it's quite lethal.
DM-C: How do you even start to tackle that?
SA: Well they are. Today we had a presentation from the House of Sarah, the Anglican diocese, the Polynesian Diocese of the Polynesian Church, and they are doing a lot of work around this and getting other mainstream churches on board. A difficult area, of course is the newly emerging churches, which are away from the mainstream and are a lot more fundamentalist and haven't actually in any way shown any signs of embracing the issue of women's human rights or ending violence against women.
DM-C: Are the churches helping to spread this message?
SA: Yes they are actually, the Anglican church in Fiji, the Diocese of Polynesia, they actually have a resolution to do this and they are taking action. Recently the Methodist Church in Fiji has got a code of conduct for its priests and is working on ending violence against women and have started work on it already with their priests undergoing training in the area. We also have the Pacific conference of churches that for the first time held a male advocacy for women's human rights training for its priests, pastors, as well as deacons and youth who work with the churches.
DM-C: Is this being discussed in services as well?
SA: Yes they are doing that, they're preaching from the pulpit also, they're holding special days in churches, Mother's day, International Women's Day and so on to promote equality but also talk about ending violence against women. Another problematic area with the church is that though they might want to talk about ending violence towards women they fail to address the inequalities within the hierarchy of the churches the roles that women play, not allowing women to become a priest and things like that. Although the Methodist Church for the first time is allowing its deacons to sit with the decision makers at its conference, there's still a lot of work to be done there because one cannot talk about ending violence against women without talking about gender equality.
