Throughout the Pacific, women are active and respected members of their communities. However, representation of women in Pacific parliaments and congresses is still very low. Pacific Island legislatures have only on average 3% of their members who are women. Ten Pacific Islands countries have less than 5% women members. Five of these countries have no women in their legislature at all.

Many women have little opportunity to seriously think of standing for parliament, due to their busy lives. Even when women do take the big step of standing for election, they have reported that they get very little support and have to take a “trial and error” approach to the process, trying to work out what to do along the way.

This booklet aims to help women who want to get involved in their own local, national and regional governance to get STARTed to take on the challenge of elections. The START strategy has been developed as a quick reference point, to help women remember some of the key issues they will need to consider and key activities they need to undertake when running for elections. It is based on the experiences of Pacific women themselves who have stood for election, drawing on their successes and the  lessons they learned along the way.

This booklet has been designed to help individual women work through the issues in a systematic way. At the same time, it is important to remember that there are many individuals and organisations around the Pacific working to support women standing for election. Drawing on the diversity of experiences in our region, we can all work together to ensure that women are able to be properly represented in their own legislatures.