13 results
 Pacific Data Hub

This paper draws on research undertaken in 2015 among coffee smallholders in Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea, focusing specifically on some of the challenges faced by women coffee farmers in accessing financial services.

The research was a collaboration between the Department of Pacific Affairs (formerly the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program) at the Australian National University and the Coffee Industry Support Project of CARE International in Papua New Guinea.

 Pacific Data Hub

Men’s control of coffee in Papua New Guinea is not only an artefact of colonial agricultural extension but also a consequence of gender norms and the system of land tenure that privileges men. Due to the historic association of coffee with ‘men’s business’, men tend to see coffee income as largely their own, despite women working in coffee production. This research with coffee smallholders showed that money was the most common reason for arguments between couples, with 37.8% of women and 38% of men saying this was what they argued over.

 Pacific Data Hub

This paper reports on research that found that increasing women’s savings or income does not necessarily lead to greater bargaining power within the household in Papua New Guinea. For women, the choice to escape violent relationships is constrained by gender norms and social customs such as bride price, custody of children and access to land, which limit their ability to live independently.

 Pacific Data Hub

This short paper draws on research undertaken in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in 2015. It specifically explored the relationship
between women’s economic empowerment and violence
against women through in-depth qualitative interviews.
Interviewees included business women in the urban context
of Arawa (Kieta District) and rural women involved in informal
marketing and alluvial mining (Panguna District) and in
informal marketing and cocoa farming (Tinputz District).

 Pacific Data Hub

The Bougainville Do No Harm research confirms that women do not always gain greater empowerment when they bring money into the household because their access to economic resources does not automatically give them control over those resources. Neither is violence towards them reduced. Bringing economic resources into the household may in fact heighten tensions over the expenditure of the resources.

 Pacific Data Hub

This short paper details a pilot project using mobile phones to record and report data about accusations of witchcraft at funerals. The pilot is part of a growing body of work that uses mobile phones to collect and record data in environments that are otherwise difficult to reach, and for a wide range of purposes, including health, education, agriculture and development. The project also shares important features with conflict-mapping programs which use mobiles phones to track and map outbreaks of violence.

 Pacific Data Hub

This paper draws explicit links between witchcraft and sorcery practices and beliefs in Melanesia, and poor development outcomes. It notes four distinct categories of impact:

- The prevalence of these beliefs and practices mean that many are unwilling to engage fully in the cash economy or to exploit their particular skills or opportunities to the maximum, so as to avoid becoming a target of an attack by a sorcerer or witch motivated by envy.

 Pacific Data Hub

The issue of sorcery and witchcraft-related accusations and violence in Papua New Guinea is receiving increasing attention domestically and internationally. A growing body of literature is also focusing on the issue, providing non-government organisations, donor agencies, and the Papua New Guinea government with an evidence base for addressing the problem in locally appropriate ways. Little of the literature, however, deliberates upon the perpetrators of these violent attacks.

 Pacific Data Hub

This short paper reports on planned research in Fiji, the first country in the Pacific to pilot a measure of poverty at an individual level from a gender perspective.

 Pacific Data Hub

This short paper reflects on the experiences of 38 young, educated women in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. It finds that:

- Young women in Melanesia are subject to intimate forms of control. However educated and able they may be, family members continue to exert or seek to exert control over their behaviour and choices.

 Pacific Data Hub

This short paper looks at how the terms ‘sorcery’ and ‘witchcraft’ are frequently fused or used interchangeably, and are rarely conceptually distinguished. This blurring of the two occurs not only in popular accounts in the media but is widely reproduced by NGOs, donor organisations, and government institutions. A new acronym has even been coined SRK (‘sorcery-related killing’) that perpetuates the definitional lack of clarity, since it uses one term, sorcery, to refer to both sorcery and witchcraft.

 Pacific Data Hub

At the opening of the 2014 State of the Pacific Conference organised by the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop noted the Australian Government’s commitment to expanding the Seasonal Worker Program (SWP) and the contribution that labour mobility could make to development in the Pacific. In the minister’s words, ‘some seasonal workers have earned up to $12,000 in Australia, and have been able to remit about $6,000 over a six month placement, the scheme is having flow-on benefits.

 Pacific Data Hub

Even as the importance of women’s economic inclusion and empowerment is acknowledged and acted on, it is also known that such gains are not without risk; for increasing command over financial resources can expose women to domestic conflict and violence.