FWCC Says NO to Men’s Rights Department Proposal

The Fiji Women's Crisis Centre (FWCC) says proposals to establish a “Men’s Department” demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of gender inequality and the purpose of Fiji’s national women’s machinery.

In a statement, FWCC said the ministry responsible for women exists to correct historic and ongoing inequality — not to provide special treatment. Coordinator Shamima Ali said women have been “structurally excluded for generations — in law, politics, economic life and national decision-making.”

“Proposing a ‘Men’s Department’ recentres male privilege in a system where men already dominate parliament, cabinet, business, policing, defence and religious leadership,” she said.

FWCC warned that establishing a men-specific department would reduce already scarce resources needed for violence prevention and survivor support, create a false equivalence between men’s challenges and women’s systemic discrimination, and undermine decades of feminist organising that made women visible in national policy.

Ali said “women’s rights work remains severely underfunded” and that redirecting resources to a Men’s Department “would undermine hard-won progress.”

The organisation acknowledged that men face real issues, including mental health struggles and pressures from harmful masculine norms, but said these are best addressed by strengthening existing ministries rather than building a new one.

“We support work with men and boys — but the solution lies in transforming harmful masculinities and improving mental-health, youth and social-service systems,” Ali said. “Not in creating a parallel ministry based on a false narrative of equal disadvantage.”

She said women’s ministries exist because “the imbalance is real,” adding that any proposal ignoring this “is not serious about human rights or evidence.”