This micro-credential will consider the challenges and opportunities to extend conceptualisations of ‘legitimate leadership’ in the Pacific. Across most sectors, women are significantly under-represented in positions of formal leadership in the Pacific, including in politics, the public service, and business. Research points to a range of socio-economic and structural barriers to women’s leadership, including limited access to financial resources and education, and pervasive underlying social norms that place value in men and masculine forms of leadership. The micro-credential will examine a range of policy and programmatic interventions that have been designed over the last decade to improve women’s leadership in the Pacific.

The micro-credential aims to explore the governance, uptake and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the Pacific region. ICTs to be examined include ‘new technologies’ such as basic mobile telephones, smartphones, the internet and social media. Access to news and other forms of information and communication will also be discussed for context, for example through mediums such as radio, television and newspapers. Governance of ICTs includes regulatory issues such as operator licences, spectrum allocation, interconnection, infrastructure sharing, universal access schemes, mobile telephone registration and pricing determinations. Cyber security and state surveillance will also be discussed in the credential. Uptake of ICTs differs between Pacific nations, due to factors such as affordability, network coverage, technical literacy and access to electricity. In the Pacific context, cultural norms, gender relations and family dynamics may also influence whether or not a person uses a mobile telephone or other ICT. Use of ICTs will be examined from four perspectives, relating to specific aims and practices: daily use, political use, development-focused use and e-government (electronic government).

This micro-credential will provide an introduction to key issues in law and justice in the Pacific islands region. To understand the issues, the focus will be on historical and colonial legacies, and the plural and hybrid forms of law and justice that have emerged. Within this context, the micro-credential will consider law and justice development in the region, including broad trends, challenges & reform priorities. Case studies from region will illustrate the key issues. The micro-credential aims to equip enrollees with tools to facilitate the analysis and understanding of domestic and international to reform and develop law and justice capabilities in an environment of rapid change and challenging complexity.

This micro-credential will address the importance of understanding the many ways that culture influences development. Culture is often seen to be an impediment to development, especially to central elements of development policy such as human rights and gender equality. Culture is also often used to justify violence or discrimination and is considered a major contributing factor in violence against women. As a result, cultural practices are sometimes given the negative label of “harmful traditional practices.” However, while violence and discrimination are serious problems, the importance of culture in development is a wider issue, for successful development requires policy makers and practitioners to work with culture.

Given the significance of culture in the development process, it is important to understand just what we mean by culture. The micro-credential will draw on contemporary anthropological writings to examine and analyse the significance of culture and the multiple ways that culture influences development in the Pacific.

The micro-credential will draw on case studies which show how cultural beliefs shape the specific ways that Pacific Islanders understand and explain such things as:

Finally, these case studies will demonstrate why a thorough understanding of culture is necessary for the development interventions which are appropriate and acceptable to the people they are applied to.

This micro-credential will consider what it means to be ‘feminist’ in contemporary Pacific society, and the goals of indigenous Pacific feminist action and advocacy. Through a series of guest lectures, the credential will showcase the stories of various self-identified Pacific feminists, revealing their triumphs and challenges in articulating a vision of change in their own contexts. Enrollees will also engage with a range of Pacific media – print and digital – to consider key issues pertinent to feminist struggles in the region, and strategies adopted by feminists to address these. Finally, the micro-credential will interrogate the occurrence of ‘feminist backlash’ in the Pacific, and consider its roots and consequences.