Women’s Safety in the Pacific Region: A Pilot Study

Abstract

This brief introduction seeks to explain why we embarked on the journey of collaborative research on women’s safety. We agreed that although there is an ever-growing literature on gender-based violence in the Pacific region, there are many spheres of women’s lives that are not being included in such research, nor were women (and men) being asked about their feelings of safety and what it might mean to live in a world free from violence and harm. As a result, we embarked on this joint project — a pilot study — to give substance to and address our disquiet. This introduction gives context by outlining current methodological gaps and the focus on domestic and family violence, before providing an overview of the study and the common threads that emerged across the different chapters in the report.