Gender Equality
Gender equality is intrinsically linked to the Partnership’s understanding of developmental leadership and the shifts in power, governance, access and resource allocation that are required if Vanuatu is to achieve its national development goals of an inclusive and prosperous society.
The Partnership actively supports achieving gender equality in ways which respect Melanesian culture and values, with a specific focus on:
Better Balance Strategy
The Partnership’s gender equality strategy – the ‘Better Balance Strategy’ – guides its approach to supporting women’s successful participation in the skills system and broader prosperity outcomes, in collaboration with the Department of Women’s Affairs (DoWA) and in line with the National Gender Equality Policy.

Key areas of support include:
- Skills Centre ensure that the timing, location and phasing of skills training activity takes into account women’s workloads and constraints on travel, and provide reasonable accommodations for female participants to maximise success – including child-minders and breast-feeding areas, as well as the provision of spaces for female clients to meet together to practice their skills after and between training sessions.
- Skills Centres and productive sector partners facilitate engagement of women in non-traditional trade areas such as construction, including women with disabilities, through liaison with Organisations of People with Disabilities, and proactively enable participation in accredited training pathways.
- Market access initiatives, which purposefully support women’s empowerment – e.g.: provincial Handicraft/Creative Industry hubs – promote and respect women’s leadership and perspectives.
- Collaboration with the Balance of Power initiative to influence discriminatory attitudes and norms around the legitimacy of women’s leadership and actively promote the leadership capability of women within the Partnership and its partner organisations.
- Partnership with ADRA to deliver Family Life Education (gender-based violence prevention) courses to Partnership staff and clients, as well as mainstreaming course content delivery into other skills training activities, as well as engagement with non-supportive partners of female to build understanding of the broad-based benefits of women’s upskilling and leadership.