At the end of 2016, Tonga and Vanuatu had no women in parliament. Across the countries, there are prevailing traditional views that leadership is for men. To address this issue, some states have considered reserved seats (PNG, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu), although only Samoa has been successful in amending its constitution to introduce a 10 per cent quota of women representatives into the national Legislative Assembly (PIFS, 2015a). Tonga is one of the few countries in the world, along with the United States, that have not yet ratified CEDAW.8 The biggest challenge for these countries, though, will be to eliminate violence against women, as recent studies for Fiji, Kiribati, PNG, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu reported that over 60 per cent of women had experienced physical and/or sexual violence (PIFS, 2015a).