LA COLONIA MODELO

These efforts within Papua New Guinea occurred within a context of increasing international focus on gender equality as a pillar of development during the 1990s (Merry 2006). Over subsequent decades, this created an environment where promoting, or at least being seen to promote, women’s rights had growing political legitimacy. Participating in conversations about gender inclusion was a way for leaders to demonstrate cosmopolitan attitudes and modern development aspirations. At the same time, conservative attitudes among constituents and political peers meant that moving beyond talk to implementation of policy has remained a slow process.

This is not to downplay the importance of more progressive political rhetoric and policy. The September 1995 ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) by Papua New Guinea is one example. Although the Preamble of the Constitution of Papua New Guinea (1975) explicitly protects the ‘equal participation by women citizens in all political, economic, social and religious activities’, previous governments had declined to ratify CEDAW on the basis that eliminating gender inequality may be counter to cultural traditions (Amnesty International 2006, Government of Papua New Guinea 2009, Macintyre 2000, Papua New Guinea National Council of Women 2010). Similar attitudes persist in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere (see also Taylor 2008b); the risks to cultures, families and the nation as a result of allowing actions of bikhet women to go unpunished were put to me throughout the research. Nonetheless, CEDAW ratification represented an important symbolic step forward in further formalising the illegitimacy of violence against women and recognising women’s right to co-participate in processes of determining cultural legitimacy.15

15 _{It is worth noting, however, that it took a further 15 years, until 2010, for PNG to provide its First, Second} and Third Periodic Reports to the UN CEDAW Committee (Amnesty International 2009, Kidu 2010, Papua New Guinea National Council of Women 2010, Varolli 2010).

Legislative change is critical to creating environments that enable shifts in cultural values (Stewart 2010). In 2002, the Criminal Code (Sexual Offences and Crimes against Children) Act (PNG) was amended to include provisions for prosecution of marital rape. In January 2009, the chief magistrate issued Practice Directions for Family and Sexual Violence Protection Order Rules that were ‘intended to provide consistency in the District Courts and to enable the District Courts to issue Interim Protection Orders expeditiously at any time and at no cost to the applicant’ (2009, 1). To improve police responses to violence against women, between 2007 and 2013, the Royal Papua New Guinean Constabulary (RPNGC) established 11 FSVUs in police stations across the country. In September 2013, Parliament passed the Family Protection Bill, 20 years after such legislation was first proposed in the LRC report (Bradley 1992, Chandler 2014). This Bill explicitly frames acts of domestic violence as criminal offences and outlines more stringent rules regarding protection orders than were previously in place.

The way in which this Bill was passed by Parliament is indicative of the extent of the shifts in public political rhetoric about violence against women in Papua New Guinea since the 1980s. The Family Protection Act was passed 65:0 by members of the national parliament. The unanimous support from members who were present for the vote illustrates the growth in public support, and therefore the available political cachet, for responding to violence against women.16 _{This stands in stark contrast to the reported} dissent from members of the all-male parliament in 1987, when the LRC presented their interim report:

Several [Honourable Members] asserted that there is nothing wrong with wife beating provided the husband has good reason for it, and a Minister even went so far as to claim that paying bride price makes the man head of the family, so that husbands feel they ‘own the woman and can belt her any time they like’. Another Honourable Member was annoyed that the nation’s leaders were being asked to discuss something as trivial as wife beating: ‘We are wasting our time instead of discussing the development of the country. We should have something better to discuss than this!’(Bradley 1992, 18).

The tone of political discourse around family violence has changed significantly. Public speeches from MPs in the 2010s are more likely to discuss the national importance of

16 _{This paved the way for a new Gender Violence Strategy, launched in 2016 (however, crucially, action} plans for the strategy had not been funded at the time of writing) (Government of Papua New Guinea 2016).

addressing violence against women (see O’Neill 2015). There has been important grassroots action, which, supported by efforts from international actors, has created pressure for increased state attention to addressing gender-based violence. This has resulted in significant policy and legislative change (Biersack 2016, 273-291). However, throughout my thesis research, the sentiments expressed above in 1987 reverberated through explanations and justifications of family violence, and in some cases, sexual violence. Many people across Papua New Guinea hold similar points of view. For example, the Bougainville Health and Safety Study found that 72 per cent of women and 85 per cent of men agreed that a woman should obey her husband. Forty-five per cent of women and 60 per cent of men agreed that if a woman does something wrong her husband has a right to punish her (Jewkes et al. 2013). Throughout the thesis, I consider how these apparently inconsistent views are held together and navigated in ideas of what it means to be a good man.