Women's advocates in Tonga say while they're happy two women have been elected, it is disappointed only 14 percent of people voted for female candidates in last week's vote.
Ofa Guttenbeil Likiliki Photo: RNZI / Koro Vaka'uta
Tonga's Women and Children's Crisis Centre said while it was happy two women have been elected, it was disappointed only 14 percent of people voted for female candidates in last week's election.
The centre's director Ofa Guttenbeil Likiliki said nationally there were only 5,575 votes for women from a total count of nearly 40,000.
She said while special measures like quotas could be short term solutions for increasing women's numbers in parliament, the long term solution is education in schools, as many children are still faced with gender stereotypes at home.
"The formal education system should fill that gap and teach the principles of equality so that we don't have this statistical outcome where 86 per cent of all voters, the majority of them women female voters, are sending their votes for male candidates based on the fact that yes they've got these policies but also because he's a man."