PNG still a man’s world, says PM’s wife

Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea Post-Courier/PINA Nius Online) – Lady Roslyn Morauta says Papua New Guinea women have to protect their position in traditional society in the face of serious threats.

The Prime Minister’s wife said this when opening the Pihi Manus Resource Centre .

She said women make up half the country, yet their talents go largely unrecognized and untapped.

Our labor makes households, workplaces and the nation function. But our labor is not valued. In a man is world, women are simply there. And let us not fool ourselves, PNG is a man’s world, she said.

She said two women represented half the population in the national parliament, but there had been too few women MPs since independence and this needed to be rectified.

Lady Morauta said provisions in the integrity bill were designed to encourage women to be members of political parties and for parties to encourage women to stand for parliament and to provide them with support to get elected. This demonstrated the Prime Minister’s commitment to improving the standing of women in the community through better political representation.

The bill is the most important constitutional change Papua New Guinea has contemplated. It would help provide the political stability that is essential for success of the government’s program of reconstruction and development.

Without that political stability, our children face an uncertain future, Lady Morauta said as the passage of the bill was hijacked by a dissident faction of the government.

Lady Morauta said a nation that exploited only half its resources was only half a nation. One reason is that women living in traditional circumstances, where power and position are clearly recognized, and accepted, are being disenfranchised by money, she said.

And there are no recognized mechanisms that place money in the context of women and their position in traditional society. She said research on Misima when the gold mine was producing at its peak showed the availability of large amounts of cash was imposing severe stresses on the community.

These stresses were not just the most visible things such as the consumption of alcohol, a rising crime rate and family breakdown. They went to the very heart of women’s position in their own communities.

“The research showed there was a strong evidence that women’s traditional authority and prestige were being weakened and their roles made less relevant, she said.