Author(s)

Yihui Su

Corresponding Author

Yihui Su

Abstract

Pacific Islands region is the area whose women occupy the fewest parliament seats. In recent years, efforts are made to improve women’s political status, increase the proportion of women members of parliaments in Pacific Islands. Researchers have identified the role of local and external actors in promoting women empowerment in this area. This article seeks to clarify an alternative explanation that above all those powers, Inter-Governmental Organizations (IGO) play a crucial role. They invent various measures to improve women’s political participation in the area, increasing their representation in the parliaments. In this article, three causal mechanisms—economic donation, political participation and identity constitution are identified to analyze how IGOs contribute to Pacific’s quota campaign in recent ten years. In analyzing the efforts of IGOs in increasing women’s representation in Pacific, this article contributes to the research of Pacific’s women empowerment in terms of theory, emphasizing the role of IGOs, discussing how theory of new-liberal institutionalism can practice in gender equality of Pacific. At the level of public policy, the article arranges the policies of IGOs in Pacific’s women empowerment, affirming the core role of IGOs in this domain.

Keywords

International organization, Women’s representation, Women’s empowerment, Pacific, Gender equality