Talofa le Faatonu. Dear Editor,

I found Seuseu Fata Faalogo’s commentary on the Honorable Mulipola Anarosa Ale-Molio’o, Minister of Women Community and Social Development’s keynote address to commemorate and celebrate International Women’s Day to encapsulate hegemonic masculinity that is neanderthal at best, offensive at worse and downright rude to the occasion of which the minister spoke with such depth of knowledge and eloquence.

One would think that in honour of International Women’s Day, a female journalist would have been sent to cover the event so that we could hear a woman’s point of view on the minister’s speech which brilliantly used the traditional Samoan proverbial wisdom of house-thatching to extol the strength and power of female camaraderie i:e teamwork to get the job, in fact, any job is done and to do so with excellence.

The journalist in question not only mocked the minister for what he believed to be her seemingly narrow scope of vision but dictated virtues he felt the minister should have extolled, protector of family honour, pae and auli, mediator and peacemaker and most of all this, mother, as if the minister had just arrived from Mars and was clueless to them.

I found Faalogo’s commentary cringe-worthy and frankly unnecessary.

A printed copy of the Minister’s original speech would have sufficed and had been far more useful to readers than a third-rate analysis of a keynote offered by a woman who had obviously done her homework (seeing that according to Wikipedia, she is the first woman ever appointed Finance Minister of Samoa).

Respectfully,

Ma le ava tele,

Papali’i Sia Figiel