A concern on violence

No women will be able to perform equally in a job while she is being beaten at home.

A female leader of a project in government voiced this concern when she was giving her goodbye speech to colleagues before she leaves work here (in Vanuatu) and returns home, to Australia.

She is Joeena Simpson from the Road for Development (R4D) Program under the Department of Public Works (PWD) in Port Vila.

She said: “In the last weeks we (audience) have seen headline articles about two very tragic deaths occurring because of domestic violence.

“Women in work places in Vanuatu are subjected to intolerable abuse.

“Every day I go to work I have learnt to recognize the look in the eyes of women I work with and work for,” she said.

A concerned Simpson said she believes the only way to bring change is for ni-Vanuatu men to stand up and campaign with women and girls against violence towards women.

Women are dis-empowered enough, she stressed.

“It’s up to the men to stand up and act. Get the message out there that there is zero tolerance of abuse and they will not do this again.

“Until you do that, this country cannot progress in the way it does,” she said.

She went on to say: “Women breed the future of this country.

“But, they cannot nurture nor provide the care needed for the children when they are beaten.”

This was her final speech before she leaves office as Team Leader of R4D Program since 2016.

To her colleague female employees, she said: “You are beautiful and unique. I encourage you to have each others’ back, stand up and demand what you deserve in your work places”.

Joenna Simpson is a mother of two children.

She has been working in the Pacific for many years.

She said she made the choice of raising her kids in the Pacific for she wanted them to experience growing up in a community-based culture.

For them to understand what it means to be connected to other people and to have obligations to those people.

Joeena said:””I see them emerging before me and I am proud of the qualities they have.

“Their incredible obligation to their friends and families and the fact that my son never has any money because he spent on all his friends and keep asking me for more.

“I know that these qualities come from their Pacific up-growing.

‘’Because in Australia, we have lost that connection.

“But, what surprises me of this connection Vanuatu people have of each other is the amount of shameful domestic violence.”