Posted on 06 March 2025
The Fred Hollows Foundation NZ Chief Executive Officer, Dr Audrey Aumua
What does the IWD 2025 theme, “For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment,” mean to you personally and professionally?
For me, it’s a day to focus in on the gender equality journey for women globally and to reflect on the ongoing issues that still affect women – particularly issues around discrimination, equality and women’s advancement. But it’s also a day for celebrating women’s achievements and raising awareness around how well we are doing.
In your experience, what are some of the most significant challenges and opportunities facing women and girls in the International Development and Humanitarian sector today?
For those of us who work in the humanitarian sector, we are really conscious of the disparity between men and women, in particular, their access to services and the impact of disasters and weather events - which impact women and girls much more profoundly.
We see this disparity in access to services in our work, with women and girls facing unique barriers to accessing eye care in the Pacific. In 2021 we partnered with CARE International in Papua New Guinea (PNG) to conduct a study to better understand the significant gender imbalance in rates of vision loss. The study found that various gendered factors had an impact on eye health service accessibility, including men holding decision making power, women being overburdened, lacking time, having restricted movement, and experiencing shame and stigma when accessing eye health services. Contextual factors such as geographical challenges, financial costs, lack of awareness of services, and traditional attitudes and beliefs around causes of eye health issues and modern medicine, compound these existing barriers for women.
This results in women and girls being more likely to experience vision loss and less likely to access the treatment they need. For example, in PNG, women and girls experience considerably higher rates of blindness and vision impairment than men, with 61 per cent of blindness affecting women.
It is also important to highlight that women and girls are not only directly disproportionately impacted by vision loss but also indirectly. Women and girls also often carry the added responsibility of caring for family members who are blind or vision impaired.
We know this significantly contributes to time and income poverty for women and girls who may have to forego educational and economic opportunities to fulfil family responsibilities within the home. I am mindful that this is the reality for many females in our Pacific region. Vision loss is therefore both a contributor to, and an outcome of, inequality.
We know that gendered inequalities across the Pacific region are often related to education and access to information and we see this more profoundly when women have less knowledge about specific health services and how to access them. Increasing access to eye care for women is key and an active area of the work we do in our organisation that we know will have a direct impact by improving women’s quality of life including their economic opportunities.
What actions can individuals and organisations take to create a more equitable and empowering future for women and girls?
It is about organisations, such as ourselves, shaping our support and interventions to have strong gender equality platforms.
At The Fred Hollows Foundation NZ, we are taking practical steps to strengthen gender equality, disability, and social inclusion (GEDSI) outcomes and support eye care to be more inclusive and equitable.
We do this by, providing patients who face mobility or security challenges with transportation, accommodation and food at outreaches; partnering with local women's and disability community-based organisations to conduct health promotion activities immediately prior to outreaches to raise awareness and tackle stigma; and conducting gender trainings including gender-based violence training to health care providers.
Probably one of the most important initiatives we are involved in, is supporting women into tertiary education. 66 per cent of the 401 graduates supported by The Foundation have been women – a truly fantastic achievement given the significant tertiary educational gender divide in the region. We know that undertaking intensive training whilst caring for children is difficult, particularly when you must train in a different country, so we offer support for mothers and families – for example relocation costs. We also work to deliver clinical training and mentoring to the workforce remotely, including after they return to their own communities to deliver eye care.
We also have a dedicated focus on women’s career pathways, and investing in their professional development opportunities, so they can reach those leadership roles and have a say in the management and design of health services. As of the end of last year, 76 per cent of our employees were female, and females were well represented in leadership positions, making up 80 per cent of our Senior Leadership Team, and 81 per cent of all manager roles across the group.