Marital sexual violence and conjugality in highlands Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Many male coffee farmers in the highlands of Papua New Guinea believe they have a right to sex with their spouse without regard to her wishes. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, I argue that such sexual violence is best framed within local understandings of what marriage involves – an implicit contract which conveys rights and responsibilities to each partner in a marriage. Changes brought by modernity are transforming traditional understandings of conjugality, causing some discrepancies in partners’ understanding of what they have agreed to. Too many women continue to endure marital rape, but some signs of improvement are discernible.

Keywords:

• Sexual violence
• marriage
• conjugality
• Papa New Guinea
• gender

Acknowledgements

I thank the researchers from CARE (Gabriella Marimyas, Garry Matthew, Lavinia Magiar, Grace Mondiai, Charles Iha, Judy Andreas, Russell Ada and Jonathan Mathew), Asha Titus, and Anna Bryan of CARE’s Coffee Industry Support Project for her commitment to and support for the research.

Disclosure statement

The author declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this paper.

Notes

1 Over one third of all women worldwide have experienced some form of sexual violence (World Health Organization (WHO) 2013, 2, 20).

2 Examples include group rape (Wood 2005), the techniques and practices used in sexual coercion (Sikweyiya and Jewkes 2009), the relationship between masculinity and sexual violence (Fahlberg and Pepper 2016), and the relationship between sexual violence and HIV (Mugweni, Pearson, and Omar 2012; Stockman, Lucea and Campbell 2013).

3 Ethical approval was provided by Australian National University’s Human Research Ethics Committee.

4 These were undertaken by Papuan New Guineans who work with CARE, as part of its Coffee Industry Support Project. Some knew some of the respondents at the different sites as part of this work and all were resident in the highlands and familiar with highlands Tok Pisin.

5 These were undertaken in Tok Pisin by the lead researcher, an Australian with thirty years’ experience conducting research in Papua New Guinea, including both the islands and highlands.

6 This comprised Goroka District, 39; Unggai-Bena District, 37; Okapa District 1, 38 and Okapa District 2, 29. For Goroka District, this included - 4 female single and 2 male single; in Unggai-Bena District - 4 female single and 2 male single; in Okapa District 1 - 4 female single and 1 male single and Okapa District 2 - 2 male single.

7 The most common reported form of violence was being hit with a fist or other weapon (34.8%; n = 46 of 132), followed by being slapped or having something thrown at them (30%; n = 40 of 132) and then being pushed, shoved or having their hair pulled (25.8%; n = 34 of 132).

Additional information

Funding

The research project – Women’s Economic Empowerment among Coffee Smallholders in Papua New Guinea - was funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development programme. The views expressed here are the author’s alone and are not necessarily those of the Australian Government.