UN Women International Women’s Day Parliamentary Breakfast 5 February 2026: Alison Davidian, Representative, UN Women Fiji MCO

We’ve just met three women: Joy, Helen, and Shabnam.

They live in different countries. They work in different ways.

But they share something fundamental - they are the backbone of food security, and local economies across the region. They carry that responsibility every day - largely unseen, and unsupported.

What you’ve just seen is not exceptional in the Pacific. It is ordinary in its extraordinariness. And that’s exactly the point and why it’s so important.

Because when we talk about gender equality, economic stability or climate resilience in our region, we are really talking about whether women like Joy, Helen and Shabnam can earn a living safely, with dignity, and without carrying all the risk alone.

We are living through a global pushback on women’s rights that is existential. It is organized, well-resourced and it’s explicit.

Around the world, hard-won gains are being rolled back - on bodily autonomy, participation, and on the very principle that equality must include everyone, not just the powerful or the permitted.

Gender equality is being reframed as optional, ideological, and expendable.

But equality is not ideology. It is foundational infrastructure - central to political and economic stability and sustainable development. When women’s rights are rolled back, democracy and development retreat with them.

Nowhere is the truth of gender equality as foundational infrastructure clearer than in the Pacific, where women’s livelihoods sit at the intersection of climate, safety and economic survival.

Joy paddles a dugout canoe to sell her goods at the Auki market in the Solomon Islands. Helen grows vegetables and raises cattle, travelling three and a half hours to sell her produce in Luganville, Vanuatu. And Shabnam grows cash crops in Ba, Fiji - contending with weather shocks, volatile prices, and limited access to buyers.

These women are not waiting to be empowered. 

They are already working, producing and sustaining families and communities.

What they lack is not effort. It is support, protection, and systems that work for them.

In the Pacific, climate change reshapes daily livelihoods. Heat spoils crops, floods destroy produce, and earthquakes wipe out markets overnight. Climate change is not abstract here. It decides whether a day’s work becomes income or loss.

And women working in informal economies face those shocks with the least protection. Many lack safety nets, bank accounts, or formal identification, and are rarely consulted in decisions that shape the systems they depend on.

For women like Joy, Helen, and Shabnam, violence is not a distant issue. 

It is harassment on the way to market, verbal abuse while selling produce, and demands for sexual favours in exchange for space or protection.

With Australia’s support through the Pacific Partnership to End Violence Against Women and Girls, UN Women has helped Pacific governments shift violence against women from being treated solely as a social issue to being recognized for what it is - a matter of economic and national security. 

When women cannot earn a living safely, economies weaken, food security suffers, and trust in institutions erodes.

Pacific governments are now undertaking pioneering work to calculate not only the cost of violence, but the cost of ending it, embedding that evidence into national budgets and public finance systems.

This is how change is made sustainable – when it is built into the systems women rely on every day. And those systems come into sharp focus in the places where women earn their living.

With Australia’s support through the Markets for Change programme, UN Women has helped transform markets where women make up the majority of vendors, from unsafe, informal spaces into platforms for women’s leadership, and resilience.

For women like Joy, Helen, and Shabnam, that means lighting, sanitation, storage, clear rules that protect them from harassment, and a voice with local authorities.

When women vendors can trade safely, organise collectively, and be heard, food security improves, and trust between citizens and the state is rebuilt.

This is what economic stability looks like when it starts with people.

Tomorrow morning, Joy will paddle her canoe again.

Helen will load her produce.

Shabnam will tend to her crops.

They will show up.

They will carry responsibility for far more than themselves.

They have already chosen action over retreat.

The question before us is whether the systems around them will meet that courage or continue to rely on it without protection.

In a moment of global pushback, that choice matters.

The values we choose to defend now will shape the lives of the next generation of women and girls - in our region, and far beyond it.

Pacific women are already carrying the weight of this moment.

Australia’s partnership is critical to ensuring they are not left to carry that burden alone.

Thank you.