‘I can rise above expectations’: the woman breaking barriers in Pacific politics

Incoming Solomon Islands MP Cathy Nori says she has proved she is ‘capable of performing tasks traditionally assigned to men’. Photograph: supplied

In the final days of her election campaign, Cathy Nori considered giving up. The 57-year-old had been trekking up a mountain, near her home in Isabel province, Solomon Islands, when she was overcome with exhaustion.

“I couldn’t help but question my purpose, silently asking … why I was enduring such hardship,” Nori says in an interview with the Guardian.