TONGA

The new government of 'Akilisi Pöhiva was tested to the limit by a number of political, economic, and policy issues after it came to power as a result of the 2014 election, the second under the amended 2010 constitution. For a reform-oriented government with minimal experience yet loaded with ambition and high expectations from the people, the stark reality of transforming and modernizing a society steeped in conservative traditional values, under the patronage of a monarch and a class of nopili (nobles), was a major challenge. Despite some of the institutional and symbolic reforms of the previous decade, some of the social issues of the previous era remained and frustrated plans for changes. One such issue was that of women's participation in politics, which is the main focus of this review.

Although some progressive changes were made in the 2010 amended constitution, remnants of the traditional patriarchal political culture persisted. For instance, no woman was elected to Parliament in the 2010 and 2014 elections. This may appear ironic because under the cultural practice of vahu, women are traditionally accorded a unique social status within the kinship system, sometimes higher than men. (This is very similar to the Fijian practice of vasu, whereby one's maternal link is considered special and sometimes more prestigious than one's paternal inheritance.) However, political power has always been a male enterprise, and before July 2016, when the first woman was elected to Parliament, males made up ioo percent of elected people's representatives and ioo percent of nobles representatives-a record that placed Tonga at the lowest rung of the parliamentary gender diversity scale in the Pacific. The election of Ms 'Akosita Lavu- lavu after a by-election in July 2016 followed successes by a number of women in the local elections a couple of weeks earlier, a testimony to the intensification of campaigns by local civil society organizations, regional organizations, and international agencies for greater awareness of women's role in politics. Nevertheless, the path to gender consciousness and empowerment in Tonga has been fraught with challenges as forces of progress and conservatism continue to clash over what is appropriate for Tongan society.

The tension between competing cultural and political discourses about gender was starkly manifested when the prime minister proudly told Parliament that...