There are some sights that Natasha Stott Despoja will never wipe from memory. Like the women she met in some clinics in Papua New Guinea, who came in just having had their hands or feet severed. Or the children she came across – in Bhutan, Madagascar and elsewhere – who had been trafficked for sex.
Such encounters, says Australia's outgoing ambassador for women and girls, have left her forever changed.
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"Everywhere I went I saw the effects of violence [against women and girls], the shame and the stigma, the aftermath both physical and emotional" she said.
"There are people I have met and things I've seen in the last few years that have shaken me. I have seen the best and worst of humanity in this job, occasionally it just saps your energy. But then I spend time with women and men advocating for gender equality and changing lives all over the world, and every day I've been inspired [by them]."
![Natasha Stott Despoja will step down in January as Australia's ambassador for women and girls.](/web/20161207142149im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/5/3/9/p/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt582y.png/1481051355988.jpg)
Ms Stott Despoja will step down in January after a three-year stint in the ambassador's role, a job that has taken her on 45 overseas trips, from the Turkish refugee camps on the Syrian border, to remote parts of the Pacific, and to massive garment factories in Cambodia.
"'I've worked in this space for most of my life, as a feminist, activist and legislator," Ms Stott Despoja told Fairfax Media, after delivering a farewell address at the Lowy Institute in Sydney.
"So I knew a lot of the statistics. But in this job I have had to put names and faces to the research."
The former senator – one-time leader of the now-defunct Australian Democrats and in 1995, the-then youngest woman to enter federal Parliament – remains passionate about pushing for greater representation for women in legislative forums around the region.
![Natasha Stott Despoja told the Lowy institute "there are people I have met and things I've seen in the last few years ...](/web/20161207142149im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/4/y/q/v/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gt582y.png/1481051355988.jpg)
Her focus has been the Indo-Pacific region, through Australian government funding for the Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development program.
The program, now four years old, commits $320 million over a decade to boosting women's economic participation, preventing violence against women and children, and supporting female participation in political forums.
It funds services such as respite and treatment for survivors of domestic violence in Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, PNG, the Marshall Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu. It has helped micro-finance businesses run by women, and is heavily invested in trying to lift the rate of women entering parliaments and councils around the region. Ms Stott Despoja says there is link between the rate of violence against women and their poor level of parliamentary representation.
In parts of the Pacific, the rate of violence against women is two-thirds of those surveyed and in some areas of PNG up to 90 per cent.
I've seen the best and worst of humanity in this job
Natasha Stott Despoja, outgoing Ambassdor for Women and Girls
In Vanuatu, 72 per cent of women have experienced some form of sexual or physical abuse but there are no women in the national legislature. Two out of five countries in the world that have no female political representation are in the Pacific, she says [the Federated States of Micronesia and Vanuatu]. And women make up just 6.1 per cent of parliamentarians in the Pacific [the lowest rate in the world], compared to a global average of around 22.6 per cent.
"We are not going to make progress on those [wider] issues until women are reflected in decision-making institutions," Ms Stott Despoja said.
"Quotas work. Let's implement them and support those countries that are considering them or doing them."
But Australia cannot afford complacency either, she suggested.
"I got in [to federal Parliament] 21 years ago this week," she told the Lowy audience. "Then 14 per cent of our Parliament was female and in 21 years I thought it will be parity for sure. I didn't think we would still be struggling to say, hey, [at least] we have got critical mass.".
Ms Stott Despoja paid tribute to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, saying she was "passionate about gender equality being at the centre of our international and foreign policy work".
She said also highlighted how some of the work being done on gender equality was intersecting with programs to counter violent extremism.
"We think of women as victims in this space, but we have to realise this is complex territory. Women can influence this for the better, mothers can help influences sons, women who are leaders in their communities have a role to play in spreading good messages. But the most confronting are the women who sign up to some of these extreme causes and the international agenda has not grappled with that.
"It's easy to dismiss this as women being lead astray by what CNN calls 'jihad hotties' pursuing this because they want to have a partner, but in fact there are multi-layered and complex reasons that women join extremist causes and the more work and research we can do in understanding that, the better, and the more we can get women as active agents in countering violent extremism, the better."