A Historical Analysis on Gender In-equality in Solomon Islands Solomon Islands Women under Pre-Colonial, Colonial and Post-Colonial state

Abstract

The Solomon Islands is a country that fares amongst the worst in the world in terms of gender equality. The World Bank reported that this island country experiences the highest incidence of Violence against Women within the Pacific Region. Contemporary society is male dominant with the majority of leadership roles in decision making settings in the family, village, provincial government level and national government level held predominantly by men. The research uses a socio-cultural approach to dig into the three periods of precolonialism, colonialism and post-colonialism to identify aspects in the sociocultural environment that gave rise to the low status of women in the Solomon Islands today. By studying literature from a variety of discourses, this paper compiles a comprehensive representation of the experiences of women in these three periods. The analysis particularly examines the pre-colonial practices of leadership and land inheritance within the patrilineal setting of Malaita island and the matrilineal setting of Guadalcanal island. Research states that during the precolonial times women enjoyed a comparatively higher status in leadership and decision making. However this was severely undermined during the onset of colonialism when Christian missionaries introduced foreign concepts to these island societies by emphasizing the public and private gender divide in men and womens roles. The introduction of private land ownership by the colonial administrators also played a part in alienating women from the land. Such changes brought into existence the cash economy that set off rural-urban migration particularly from other islands to Guadalcanal island where the capital city of the Solomon Islands is located. The country gained independence in 1978 and elected numerous governments that tried to empower women by signing up to national, regional and international instruments on womens rights and gender equality. However the ethnic uprising of 1999-2003 caused by cultural differences between the people of Malaita and Guadalcanal gave rise to an increased rate of violence against women. Coupled with the existing gender disparity in the country, the rate of violence committed against women and girls during this period served to severely implicate the status of women in the Solomon Islands to the present day. An old adage states that You never know where you are going until you know where you are coming from. This means that everything we are is built upon the past

a societys historical political, social and religious attitudes affect the present. Hence, in order to address gender inequality and understand how the society we live in came to be, it is imperative to return through history and discover what happened.