COMMENTARY: By Victoria Fielding

I once heard someone say that when the Left and the Right became polarised — when they divorced from each other — the Left got all the institutions of truth including science, education, justice and democratic government.

The Right got the institution of manipulation: the media. This statement hit me for six at the time because it seemed so clearly true.

What was also immediately clear is that there was an obvious reason why the Left sided with the institutions of truth and the Right resorted to manipulation. It is because truth does not suit right-wing arguments.

The existence of climate change does not suit fossil fuel billionaires. Evidence that wealth does not trickle down does not suit the capitalist class. The idea that diversity, equity and inclusion (yes, I put those words in that order on purpose) is better for everyone, rather than a discriminatory, hateful, destructive, divided unequal world is dangerous for the Right to admit.

The Right’s embrace of the media institution also makes sense when you consider that the institutions of truth are difficult to buy, whereas billionaires can easily own manipulative media.

Just ask Elon Musk, who bought Twitter and turned it into a political manipulation machine. Just ask Rupert Murdoch, who is currently engaged in a bitter family war to stop three of his children opposing him and his son Lachlan from using their “news” organisations as a form of political manipulation for right-wing interests.

Right-wingers also know that truthful institutions only have one way of communicating their truths to the public: via the media. Once the media environment is manipulated, we enter a post-truth world.

Experts derided as untrustworthy ‘elitists’
This is the world where billionaire fossil fuel interests undermine climate action. It is where scientists create vaccines to save lives but the manipulated public refuses to take them. Where experts are derided as untrustworthy “elitists”.

And it is where the whole idea of democratic government in the US has been overthrown to install an autocratic billionaire-enriching oligarchy led by an incompetent fool who calls himself the King.

Once you recognise this manipulated media environment, you also understand that there is not — and never has been — such as thing as a rational public debate. Those engaged in the institutions of the Left — in science, education, justice and democratic government — seem mostly unwilling to accept this fact.

Instead, they continue to believe if they just keep telling people the truth and communicating what they see as entirely rational arguments, the public will accept what they have to say.

I think part of the reason that the Left refuses to accept that public debate is not rational and rather, is a manipulated bin fire of misleading information, including mis/disinformation and propaganda, is because they are not equipped to compete in this reality. What do those on the Left do with “post-truth”?

They seem to just want to ignore it and hope it goes away.

A perfect example of this misunderstanding of the post-truth world and the manipulated media environment’s impact on the public is this paper, by political science professors at the Australian National University Ian McAllister and Nicholas Biddle.

Stunningly absolutist claim
Their research sought to understand why polling at the start of the 2023 Indigenous Voice to Parliament Referendum showed widespread public support for the Voice but over the course of the campaign, this support dropped to the point where the Voice was defeated with 60 per cent voting “No” and 40 per cent, “Yes”.

In presenting their study’s findings, the authors make the stunningly absolutist claim that:

‘…the public’s exposure to all forms of mass media – as we have measured it here – had no impact on the result’.

A note is then attached to this finding with the caveat:

‘As noted earlier, given the data at hand we are unable to test the possibility that the content of the media being consumed resulted in a reinforcement of existing beliefs and partisanship rather than a conversion.’

This caveat leaves a gaping hole in the finding by failing to account for how media reinforcing existing beliefs is an important media effect – as argued by Neil Gavin here. Since it was not measured, how can they possibly say there was no effect?

Furthermore, the very premise of the author’s sweeping statement that media exposure had no impact on the result of the Referendum is based on two naive assumptions:

• that voters were rational in their deliberations over the Referendum question; and
• that the information environment voters were presented with was rational.

Dual assumption of rationality
This dual assumption of rationality – one that the authors interestingly admit is an assumption – is evidenced in their hypothesis which states:

‘Voters who did not follow the campaign in the mass media were more likely to move from a yes to a no vote compared to voters who did follow the campaign in the mass media.’

This hypothesis, the authors explain, is premised on the assumption ‘that those with less information are more likely to opt for the status quo and cast a no vote’, and therefore that less exposure to media would change a vote from “Yes” to “No”. What this hypothesis assumes is that if a voter received more rational information in the media about the Referendum, that information would rationally drive their vote in the “Yes” direction. When their data disproved this hypothesis, the authors used this finding to claim that the media had no effect.

To understand the reality of what happened in the Referendum debate, the word “rational” needs to be taken out of the equation and the word “manipulated” put in.

We know, of course, that the Referendum was awash with manipulative information, which all supported the “No” campaign. For example, my study of News Corp’s Voice coverage — Australia’s largest and most influential news organisation — found that News Corp actively campaigned for the “No” proposition in concert with the “No” campaign, presenting content more like a political campaign than traditional journalism and commentary.

A study by Queensland University of Technology’s Tim Graham analysed how the Voice Referendum was discussed on social media platform, X. Far from a rational debate, Graham identified that the “No” campaign and its supporters engaged in a participatory disinformation propaganda campaign, which became a “truth market” about the Voice.

The ‘truth market’
This “truth market” was described as drawing “Yes” campaigners into a debate about the truth of the Voice, sidetracking them from promoting their own cause.

What such studies showed was that, far from McAllister and Biddle’s assumed rational information environment, the Voice Referendum public debate was awash with manipulation, propaganda, disinformation and fear-mongering.

The “No” campaign that delivered this manipulation perfectly demonstrates how the Right uses media to undermine institutions of truth, to undermine facts and to undermine the rationality of democratic debates.

The completely unfounded assumption that the more information a voter received about the Voice, the more likely they would vote “Yes”, reveals a misunderstanding of the reality of a manipulated public debate environment present across all types of media, from mainstream news to social media.

It also wrongly treats voters like rational deliberative computers by assuming that the more information that goes in, the more they accept that information. This is far from the reality of how mediated communication affects the public.

The reason the influence of media on individuals and collectives is, in reality, so difficult to measure and should never be bluntly described as having total effect or no effect, is that people are not rational when they consume media, and every individual processes information in their own unique and unconscious ways.

One person can watch a manipulated piece of communication and accept it wholeheartedly, others can accept part of it and others reject it outright.

Manipulation unknown
No one piece of information determines how people vote and not every piece of information people consume does either. That’s the point of a manipulated media environment. People who are being manipulated do not know they are being manipulated.

Importantly, when you ask individuals how their media consumption impacted on them, they of course do not know. The decisions people make based on the information they have ephemerally consumed — whether from the media, conversations, or a wide range of other information sources, are incredibly complex and irrational.

Surely the re-election of Donald Trump for a second time, despite all the rational arguments against him, is proof that the manipulated media environment is an incredibly powerful weapon — a weapon the Right, globally, is clearly proficient at wielding.

It is time those on the Left caught up and at least understood the reality they are working in.

Dr Victoria Fielding is an Independent Australia columnist. This article was first published by the Independent Australia and is republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A new edition of the Okinawan Journal of Island Studies features social justice island activism, including a case study of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Pacific Media Centre, in what the editors say brings a sense of “urgency” in the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion in scholarship.

In the editorial, the co-editors — Tiara R. Na’puti, Marina Karides, Ayano Ginoza, Evangelia Papoutsaki — describe this special issue of the journal as being guided by feminist methods of collaboration.

They say their call for research on social justice island activism has brought forth an issue that centres on the perspectives of Indigenous islanders and women.

“Our collection contains disciplinary and interdisciplinary research papers, a range of contributions in our forum section (essays, curated conversations, reflection pieces, and photo essays), and book reviews centred on island activist events and activities organised locally, nationally, or globally,” the editorial says.

“We are particularly pleased with our forum section; its development offers alternative forms of scholarship that combine elements of research, activism, and reflection.

“Our editorial objective has been to make visible diverse approaches for conceptualising island activisms as a category of analysis.

‘Complexity and nuance’
“The selections of writing here offer complexity and nuance as to how activism shapes and is shaped by island eco-cultures and islanders’ lives.”

The co-editors argue that “activisms encompass multiple ways that people engage in social change, including art, poetry, photographs, spoken word, language revitalisation, education, farming, building, cultural events, protests, and other activities locally and through larger networks or movements”.

Thus this edition of OJIS brings together island activisms that “inform, negotiate, and resist geopolitical designations” often applied to them.

Geographically, the islands featured in papers include Papua New Guinea, Prince Edward Island, and the island groups of Kanaky, Okinawa, and Fiji.

Among the articles, Meghan Forsyth’s ‘La langue vient de la musique’: Acadian song, language transmission, and cultural sustainability on Prince Edward Island engagingly examines the “sonic activism” of the Francophone community in Canada’s Prince Edward Island.

“Also focused on visibility and access, David Robie’s article ‘Voice of the Voiceless’: The Pacific Media Centre as a case study of academic and research advocacy and activism substantiates the need for bringing forward journalistic attention to the Pacific,” says the editorial.

Dr Robie emphasises the need for critical and social justice perspectives in addressing the socio-political struggles in Fiji and environmental justice in the Pacific broadly, say the co-editors.

In the article My words have power: The role of Yuri women in addressing sorcery violence in Simbu province of Papua New Guinea, Dick Witne Bomai shares the progress of the Yuri Alaiku Kuikane Association (YAKA) in advocacy and peacebuilding.

In ‘La Pause Décoloniale’: Women decolonising Kanaky one episode at a time, Anaïs Duong-Pedica, “provides a discussion of French settler colonialism and the challenges around formal decolonisation processes in Kanaky”.

Inclusive feminist thinking
The article engages with “women’s political activism and collaborative practice” of the podcast and radio show La Pause Décoloniale.

The co-editors say the edition’s forum section is a result of “inclusive feminist thinking to make space for a range of approaches combining scholarship and activism”.

They comment that the “abundance of submissions to this section demonstrates the desire for academic outlets that stray from traditional models of scholarship”.

“Feminist and Indigenous scholar-activists seem especially inclined towards alternative avenues for expressing and sharing their research,” the coeditors add.

Eight books are reviewed, including New Zealand’s Peace Action: Struggles for a Decolonised and Demilitarised Oceania and East Asia, edited by Valerie Morse.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Waitangi Tribunal has released a scathing ruling of the New Zealand government’s covid-19 response and vaccine rollout, saying Māori were put at risk.

The tribunal held an urgent hearing early this month, and released its findings today.

The tribunal says cabinet’s decision to go against official advice and not prioritise Māori in the vaccine rollout breached the Treaty principles of active protection and equity.

The government has said it instead opted for a whānau-centred approach.

The tribunal, in its report, said it could not understand why it would go for this against all expert advice.

While accepting a shift to the traffic light system was necessary, it found the rapid transition put Māori at risk.

The decision also put Māori health providers under extreme pressure on limited resources — pressure created by a delayed rollout, and years of chronic underfunding by the state.

It also said the Crown did not consistently engage with Māori to the fullest extent practicable on its pandemic response, a breach of the principle of partnership.

Better support recommended
It recommended better ethnicity data collection, better resourcing and support for Māori providers and communities, and a more equitable rollout for booster shots and paediatric vaccines.

Māori Council national secretary Peter Fraser described the Waitangi Tribunal report as “vindication”.

Fraser told RNZ Morning Report it was a strong ruling that showed the Crown had to uphold its Treaty obligations during a pandemic.

“We want to give credit to the tribunal, they took urgency.”

He said the “exceptional report” of more than 140 pages was put together in a couple of weeks before Christmas.

“It’s absolutely vindicated the Māori Council.”

He said he expected a difference in the paediatric vaccine rollout and booster programme.

Hopeful about new Māori Health Authority
“We are hopeful about the Māori Health Authority and we wish it was up and running now.”

Interim Māori Health Authority chief executive Riana Manuel said the report’s findings were not surprising.

She told Morning Report that she had been on the frontline during the pandemic, vaccinating and swabbing communities for nearly two years.

“We knew that if we didn’t prioritise Māori, we were going to be having to do what we’ve done for the last five months, which is try and get our people back online to getting them vaccinated.”

She said Māori were exposed to lots of misinformation while they waited for access to the vaccine, which had increased hesitancy.

“The problem is, though, like everybody else, we expend a lot of our time getting our people out of that misinformation mode and getting them back into those clinics.

“If we can learn to take the politics out of health and actually focus on what health requirements are … it’ll bring us back to what we need to do, what the right thing is to do.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fact Checking

On Mondays – or Tuesdays after public holidays – National Radio’s Kathryn Ryan runs a session called ‘Political Commentators’. On 28 April, from the right was regular commentator Matthew Hooton. From the left was Neal Jones who is listed as: “Chief of Staff to Labour Leader Jacinda Ardern, and prior to that was Chief of Staff to Andrew Little”.

It was good to hear Hooton now becoming something of an advocate for a Universal Basic Income (UBI), though (given past comments) I am not clear yet that he understands it fully.

It was concerning, however, to hear Jones – a man close to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – repeating falsehoods about Universal Basic Income. Jones said that a key problem with UBI is that it would be paid to New Zealand’s richest man, Graeme Hart. That comment reflects an attitude that is dismissive of universalism. Universalism is the basic principle that underpins democracy; and, more generally, underpins ‘horizontal equity’, the idea that we are all equal in our economic and other civil rights.

Perhaps even more importunately, Jones’ comment on Tuesday was false.

It was me who in 1991 first coined the term ‘Universal Basic Income’; my aim was to connect the established concept of ‘Basic Income’ (‘Citizens Income’ in the United Kingdom) with insights gleaned from New Zealand’s tradition of universal income support, as established in the 1938 Social Security reforms and as reaffirmed in the 1972 Royal Commission on Social Security.

The mechanism I envisaged in 1991 is: “a universal tax credit available to every adult – the universal basic income (UBI) – and a moderately high flat tax rate”.

(Refer to my ‘Briefing Paper’ From Universal Basic Income to Public Equity Dividends (2018) which in turn links to a report that links to, among other papers, my original 1991 University of Auckland Policy Discussion Paper. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first ever published use of the name ‘Universal Basic Income’. The name started to be used internationally after I presented a paper at the Basic Income European Network conference in Vienna in 1996.)

Since the 1990s, the concept of Universal Basic Income has become poorly defined, and tends to be seen, simplistically, as an unfunded handout, a kind of regularly paid ‘helicopter money’. In that sense, it is true that some proposals that use the name ‘Universal Basic Income’ would raise Graeme Hart’s income. But not all versions of UBI. In those versions that are truest to the underlying concept – Graeme Hart’s income would be unaffected.

So, once again, for the remainder of this essay, I am going to avoid the term ‘Universal Basic Income’. The term I will use here is ‘Universal Income Flat Tax’ (UIFT, if you will). This is a mechanism made up from a universal income and a single (flat) rate of income tax. Thus, the universal income is funded by the removal of the lower marginal tax rates. In the New Zealand case, that means the universal income replaces the 10.5%, 17.5% and 30% marginal tax concessions. With a single tax rate of 33% and a universal income of $175 per week, Graeme Hart would be completely unaffected, at least in the implementation phase. This represents a reconceptualisation of income tax rather than a redistribution of income.

The Mechanism at Work

Rather than labour the point about how we introduce the UIFT mechanism, it’s good to get the vision of the mechanism in action. It is a mechanism that addresses the issues of stability, precarity, equity, and sustainability. UIFT is not a sufficient panacea to cure all our economic ailments, just as the introduction of MMP did not remove the politics from politics. UIFT is, however, a mechanism that makes the necessary possible. It is an enabling mechanism for the evolution of liberal democracy. The Covid19 global emergency has shown more clearly than ever that our present ways of thinking about public finance are disabling, and as such threaten to bring about an end to liberal democracy in some parts of the world.

(Much of the disabling is due to the fact that many welfare benefits continue to be delivered to us in the form of tax exemptions, allowances, concessions and graduations. These are attractive to recipients because they are unconditional – they do not have to be applied for – and to policymakers because they barely contributes to public debates about social welfare. The big problem with this kind of benefit is that, when a person’s income declines, these tax-related benefits also decline. We tend to think of benefits as a cushion, or a safety net. These tax-related benefits represent the cushion being removed when we fall. The best benefits are cushions that are there for us when we fall, rather than cushions given to us when convalescing from an uncushioned fall.)

So, imagine that we already have in place a 33 percent income tax and a weekly basic universal income of $175. (For present beneficiaries, this $175 per week would represent the first $175 of their present benefit. This situation does not represent any substantial change from the income distribution we have become accustomed to. It is a conceptual change.)

How could we use this tax-benefit mechanism to address the four issues: stability; precarity; equity; sustainability?

Stability.

Stabilisation is the familiar issue of how societies use fiscal and monetary policies to manage normal economic downturns and upturns in the economy. Governments expect to pay more welfare benefits in an economic contraction (eg a recession), fewer benefits in an expansion. And governments expect to collect fewer taxes in a contraction, more taxes in an expansion.  Thus, we expect the government to run budget deficits during contractions and budget surpluses during expansions.

When we have welfare benefits that are easy to access, this process is known as automatic stabilisation. While such automatic benefits are good for the recipients, they are especially good for the stability of the economy as a whole. (Countries that already had a system of benefits in place before the Great Depression of the 1930s – notably Sweden and the United Kingdom – emerged from that emergency comparatively quickly, in 1932. Other countries – for example France and the United States – were still in economic depression at the onset of World War 2.)

The more bureaucratic the process of accessing benefits – and the more conditional those benefits are – the less efficient is the stabilisation process. (Reliance on benefits delivered as tax concessions is especially destabilising, because these benefits are lost when they are most needed. A particularly egregious example of a destabilising benefit in New Zealand at present is the In-Work Tax Credit, which, as its name suggests, is lost when recipients lose their employment. Another such benefit is the KiwiSaver annual tax credit of $521, which is progressively lost as a person’s gross weekly income falls below $1,043.)

Under the UIFT mechanism, the full universal income is retained when a person loses their job, or suffers a reduction in wages. And it’s instant, a genuine cushion; not a subsequent palliative. Further, this cushion benefit cushions people with partners still in work; many people (especially married women) do not qualify at all for present targeted bureaucratic Work and Income benefits.

When there is an economic expansion, under this UIFT regime, government income tax revenue increases by 33 cents in the dollar for every extra dollar of gross income; thus, during a normal economic upturn, the government moves into surplus more quickly and more automatically.

Precarity.

Precarity is the situation where many people are employed on short-term contracts; some may be expected to be ‘on call’ without being compensated for that restricted time. It also refers to many the self-employed people – free-lancers and small business operatives – whose labour incomes fluctuate with little predictability.

For these people, a basic universal income works as a personal economic stabiliser – a cushion allowing some income tide-over during down times – with a higher marginal tax rate which offsets this cushion in the good times. With the UIFT mechanism in place, these people can remain self-reliant, and will have minimal need to engage the welfare bureaucracy which needs to prioritise those people with structural income incapacity.

Further, the unconditional benefit component of the UIFT creates some incentive for self-employed workers to retain work-life balance, by not overworking at certain times, and by not penalising them when they need some downtime, such as family time.

Equity.

Equity is a central component of democracy. And equity represents the equal ownership of productive resources. Private equity represents the equal ownership rights of the principals of private businesses. Public equity represents the equal ownership rights of all economic citizens over those many productive resources which are not privately owned. Equity-holders expect to receive an economic return on their equity. There is no law of economics that restricts this capitalist expectation to private shareholders.

The consequence of this liberal democratic reasoning is that the universal income component of UIFT can be properly understood as an economic dividend; interest on the public equity represented by the public commons. And it also means that a universal income that is basic (ie low) need not remain low under all possible future circumstances.

Just as political citizenship reflects the universal suffrage, one person one vote, so, in a mature democracy, economic citizenship requires a universal publicly-sourced private income. One person, one equity dividend. A reflection on equity principles suggests that the universal income part of the UIFT mechanism should be understood as a public equity dividend.

A universal publicly-sourced private income is capital income, not labour income. It is a social dividend, not a wage. It is a yield on public capital. It is social capitalism at work, not socialism.

The word ‘equitable’ must be associated with an equalising mechanism. Here we may consider both financial inequality and time inequality.

A liberal democratic dividend means that one substantial part of the economic pie is distributed equally, and that the remainder of the economic pie is distributed unequally in line with market forces. It means that people experiencing substantial declines in their market incomes retain a personal stake in their liberal democracy, through their rights to an income from the public share. And it means that people experiencing increases in their market incomes do not simultaneously draw increases from the public share. Financial inequality is mitigated.

Time inequality is addressed, because the inclusion of an unconditional universal income gives encouragement to the overworked to work less, and for the underworked to work more. Without such an equalising mechanism, workers, who also lose public benefits when they lose private incomes, are disincentivised from reducing their work overloads. Likewise, people with little or no work know that, with UIFT, they will retain their publicly-sourced private income when they take on increased market workloads. The overworked work less and the underworked work more. For the unemployed and the underemployed, a basic universal income is work enabling; it facilitates rather than restricts labour supply.

Sustainability.

This issue relates to both the issue of robots and the issue of climate change. It relates more generally to the possibilities of being able to enjoy high living standards in a more relaxed form, and having a supply-elastic economy. At present we try to have a full-capacity (ie, ‘maxed out’) growing economy where we have little choice but to overproduce and overconsume. At present, our overconsumption is someone else’s livelihood.

The robot concern is that our economies will become too productive. The only thing scary about that scenario is that, at present, we have no social mechanism to distribute the proceeds of that productivity. In the absence of such a mechanism, the endgame is extreme inequality, which means (among other things) extreme poverty. An advanced society with extreme poverty has high unemployment of bothpeople and robots.

How does a mature UIFT mechanism address this issue? It addresses the issue by both raising the amount of universal income and by raising the income tax rate. If done in a neutral manner, then the overall extent of economic inequality (measured by the Gini Coefficient) would be unchanged.

In order to avoid increased inequality, both the universal benefit amount and the tax rate would need to increase. This would be a simple reflection of increasing capital income relative to labour income; more gross income accruing to ownership relative to income accruing to effort.

(At this point we might note, Graeme Hart, as a likely robot investor, would be even richer than he is now, before tax. While the UIFT mechanism would give him an increased public equity dividend, he would also pay more income tax. The net effect of these three influences on Hart’s income should be that his ‘disposable income’ would increase at about the national average.)

As this process of rising incomes and rising income taxes unfolds, it means that the public share of the economic pie increases relative to the market share. This increases the willingness of the overworked to work less. And it increases the understanding that paid work is a cost rather than a benefit. Rising public equity dividends relative to total income gives the necessary signal to the entire workforce to work less for money, and to embark on more projects that may not deliver financial returns. More voluntary unemployment, less involuntary unemployment. More ‘slack’, in the sense that slack represents market supply elasticity. An economy with more slack has the capacity to increase production when it needs to. In normal times, liberal capitalist economies should not be ‘maxed-out’; only in certain types of emergency.

We can now imagine a democratic capitalist world order, in which people choose to both earn less and spend less, while being assured that basic economic needs are covered, as well as many higher-order needs. Ironically, in our Covid19 lockdowns many of us gained a sense of that, though missing the coffee and ambience of the local café. But not missing the wider rat-race.

It is this slower living – which we have seen briefly – that has the potential to bring about environmental sustainability. We have heard more birdsong. We have smelled the flowers. We have heard that the people in China have lately seen the stars in the firmament.

We can have a high productivity economy without maxing-out our countries’ GDPs. We just need a mechanism to make the necessary possible.

What is the First Step?

In New Zealand, the first step is to reconceptualise our tax-benefit system, and in the process to apply a little relief to those who work hard without receiving high wages. This step would have easily been funded through tax revenue in 2019, pre-Covid19. Today this first step should be funded – and immediately, eg through the 14 May 2020 Budget – by Reserve Bank credit, just as the emergency wage subsidies have been funded.

See my Five Examples for any further clarification about how the transition to UIFT would affect different people.

In many other countries, the process will be more difficult. They have more complexities to unravel (compared to New Zealand) in their present income-tax scales. Australia could make the transition quite easily, with a 37% tax rate and a basic universal income of $240 per week.

We need political commentators with open minds.

————————————–

References:

Universal Basic Income (or Basic Universal Income) and Covid19. Scoop or Evening Report, 7 April 2020.

From Universal Basic Income to Public Equity Dividends (2018); Policy Observatory Briefing Papers, AUT, Auckland

Public Equity and Tax-Benefit Reform (2017); Policy Observatory, AUT, Auckland

The Universal Welfare State incorporating proposals for a Universal Basic Income, Keith Rankin, University of Auckland Policy Discussion Paper No.12, 1991

Constructing a Social Wage and a Social Dividend from New Zealand’s tax-benefit system, paper presented to the Basic Income European Network (BIEN) international conference; Vienna, Austria, 12-14 September 1996.
(Note that in this paper, I used the terms ‘full universal basic income’ and ‘adequate universal basic income’. My use here of words such as ‘full’ and ‘adequate’ are suggestive of the aspiration that a basic income could be more than a basic dividend; rather a substitute for a wage, and therefore a possible disincentive to engage with the labour market. However my emphasis in this paper – and subsequent papers – was the ‘social dividend’, a basic universal income that might eventually evolve into a non-basic payment.)

Great strides have been taken to empower women and girls in the Asia-Pacific region since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing adopted an ambitious global agenda to achieve gender equality twenty-five years ago. Gender parity has been achieved in primary education. Maternal mortality has been halved. Today, the region’s governments are committed to overcoming the persistent challenges of discrimination, gender-based violence and women’s unequal access to resources and decision-making.

The Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference for the Beijing+25 Review will meet in Bangkok this week to explore how more Beijing Declaration commitments can be met to improve the lives of women and girls in the region. Asia-Pacific governments have reviewed their progress and identified three priority areas, areas where action is imperative to accelerate progress in the coming five years.

First, we must end violence against women, such a severe human rights violation which continues to hinder women’s empowerment. As many as one in two women in the region have experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner in the last 12 months. Countries in the region have adopted laws and policies to prevent and respond to violence against women. This is progress on which we must build. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2015 adopted the Convention against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, and a Regional Plan of Action on the Elimination of Violence Against Women in 2018. Free legal services, hotlines and digital applications to report violence, and emergency shelters and safe spaces for survivors are increasingly common. New partnerships are underway challenging stigma and stereotypes, working directly with boys and men. However, more investment is needed to prevent violence, and to ensure all women and girls who experienced violence will have access to justice and essential services. 

Second, women’s political representation must be increased in Asia and the Pacific. Our region’s representation rates are behind the global average. Only one in five parliamentarians are women in Asia-Pacific. Despite governments committing to gender parity in decision making 25 years ago in Beijing, the region has seen the share of women in parliament grow at just 2.2 percentage points annually over the past two decades. We must therefore look to where faster progress has been made. In several countries, quotas have helped increase the number of women in parliament. These need to be further expanded and complemented with targeted, quality training and mentoring for women leaders and removing the barriers of negative norms, stigma and stereotypes of women in politics and as leaders.

Third, economic empowerment remains key. Only half the women in our region are in paid work, compared with 80 percent of men. Ours is the only region in the world where women’s labour-force participation is decreasing in the past 10 years. Two out of three working women are in the informal sector, often with no social protection and in hazardous conditions. Legislative measures to deliver equal pay and policies to ensure the recruitment, retention and promotion of women must be part of the solution, as must supporting the transition of women from informal to formal work sectors. Digital and financial inclusion measures can empower women to unleash their entrepreneurial potential and support economic growth, jobs and poverty reduction. Action has been taken in all these areas by individual countries. They can be given scale by countries working at the regional level.

Next year will mark the convergence of the 25 years of implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and the five-year milestone of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Investments and financing for gender equality need to be fully committed and resourced to realize these ambitious targets and commitments.  Our hope is that the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference for the Beijing+25 Review will help provide the necessary momentum. Now is time to craft priority actions for change and accelerate the realization of human rights and opportunities for all women and men, girls and boys. Let us remain ambitious in our vision, and steadfast in our determination to achieve gender equality and women empowerment in Asia and the Pacific.

About the authors:

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of ESCAP.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UN Women.

Op-Ed by Shamshad Akhtar,  Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.

In 2018, we have an opportunity to accelerate progress towards gender equality. Movements such as #MeToo have shone the spotlight on an unacceptable status quo and demonstrated how too many women the world over continue to be deprived of respect and equal opportunities. Let’s use International Women’s Day to build on this global momentum for change and suggest targeted solutions to empower women across our economies and societies. Women entrepreneurs have a key role to play.

In Asia and the Pacific, there has been some progress towards greater equality. Maternal mortality rates have dropped by over 50 per cent between 2000 and 2015. An equal number of girls and boys are now enrolled for primary school education, and near parity exists for secondary and tertiary education. But overall progress remains much too slow. On our current trajectory, South Asia would achieve gender equality in 60 years, Central Asia in 130 and East Asia and the Pacific in 160. At this rate, most women will be dead before they are equal. We need to speed things up.

With this objective in mind, the obstacles women face to find decent work or set up a business in Asia and the Pacific deserve special attention. Female labour force participation has declined in our region over the past thirty years. Most working women are trapped in precarious, informal employment, characterized by low wages and dangerous working conditions. Women are relied on to give up to six hours unpaid care work a day: invaluable to society, but thwarting career prospects, ambitions and political representation.

We know that setting up a business is a key means for women to empower themselves and break out of poverty. But just as becoming an employee is harder for women, so is becoming an entrepreneur. Barriers include a lack of access to education or training, and limited access to ICT, market information and finance. Indeed, women-owned SMEs with reliable funding sources are few and far between, in part because land is often required as collateral for credit in a region where women make up a small minority of landholders. Burdensome registration procedures combine with societal prejudice to frustrate women’s entrepreneurial potential.

The good news is that despite these constraints, the number of women entrepreneurs has been increasing in the Asia-Pacific region. Women entrepreneurs in ASEAN countries have been particularly successful. The proportion of firms with women owners stands at nearly 70 per cent in the Philippines, over 60 per cent in Thailand and over 50 per cent in Viet Nam. This has been achieved through gender responsive budgeting, programmes to support SMEs, and strong civil society advocacy to ensure women’s entrepreneurship is prioritised in national policy making. At the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) we want to build on this success and work with countries across policy areas to develop a gender responsive entrepreneurial ecosystem. Four areas are critical to do so.

First, we need to improve women’s access to diverse sources of financing. Women entrepreneurship bonds, impact investment funds and gender responsive FinTech solutions are needed to quicken the pace of change. Combined with measures to improve financial literacy, these solutions should improve access to finance but also reduce transaction costs and support broader growth.

Second, we must improve women’s access to ICT and innovative technologies. Dedicated support is needed for women SME owners wishing to adopt of the latest technology to improve business processes, product promotion and sell into bigger markets. This should be accompanied by lifelong education and training opportunities to enable women to ride successive waves of ICT innovation.

Third, we need to promote a gender responsive policy environment. Public and private institutions should increase the number of women entrepreneurs on advisory boards and the banking sector should be incentivised to serve women better. Streamlined business registration procedures and proactive outreach to potential and existing women entrepreneurs can make a real difference. Women entrepreneur networks, ensuring women’s voices are heard clearly in chambers of commerce, business associations or civil service commissions, must be part of the picture.

Making life easier for women entrepreneurs is to support women’s empowerment. It can help eliminate gender inequality, protect a fundamental human right and bring considerable economic benefits. Gender equality in Asia would increase per capita income by 70 per cent over sixty years. This would make a huge contribution to achieving sustainable development and reducing poverty. On International Women’s Day, my hope is that governments across Asia and the Pacific will be entrepreneurial about achieving equality and give women the support and opportunities they deserve.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Shamshad Akhtar is the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)