Gender Minorities In Papua, New Guinea
Minority groups are cultural, ethnically, or racially distinct group that coexists with but is subordinate to a more dominant group. Three examples of minorities are; Regional Minorities, Political Minorities, and Voluntary Minorities.
I would want to focus on gender Minorities as a woman because I am a woman and can only speak in the perspective of a woman. I will start by telling a story that happened while I was at high school in Nigeria. Every end of the year at school our teachers, would decide who would be prefects of the school, prefects are group of students selected by the school authorities to help govern their fellow students, everyone desperately wanted to be perfect including me but I really wanted to be the senior prefect, I talked to the principal about this but he wasn't on the same page with me, I can remember what he told me "Anthoneth you are a girl, you are too soft to be able to govern the whole student body". Deep down inside of me I wasn't shocked because this was something, that was installed in me while growing up, people would say "you are a girl, why are you studying so hard! Do you want to be more educated than your husband aren't you ashamed? focus on getting a husband to marry you, under-minding that I was just 13 at that time, and they would go on to say; if you accomplish all these and don't get married then you have accomplished nothing" and this made me always wonder if women where just put into the world to reproduce, what if I don't want to get married? What if I don't want kids?
A Nigerian famous female blogger, by the name of Linda Ikeji recently bought a mansion, and as expected she took a picture of her new home and uploaded it on social media, to be exact on Instagram, curiously I went to the comment section to see what people had to say, and everyone kept on saying " who will marry her now, that she has gotten all these". Sadly people have the mindset that before you can proudly say you are accomplished you must add the title Mrs to your name how sad I must add. I tell people about the "male privilege" and every time I would say this my elders would reply back to me " little girl what do you know, you are still a kid" I went to a hotel in Nigeria with a couple of my friends both male and female, on the way into the hotel I meet my mom's friend she saw me, I saw her, she smiled, I smiled back, she didn't ask any questions we exchanged pleasantries and we diverted to our various paths. An hour or so I got a call from my mom saying that her friend called saying I was going into a hotel with boys, my mom laughed at how funny it was, she said her friend called shouting and screaming that I am becoming "a bad child" going to hotels with men as she put it, on the other hand, these "men" ages ranging from 14-15 where my cousins my mom had dropped us off at the hotel to have dinner. The immediate conclusion is that a female in a hotel is there for sex work. That is how society values us, thinking that women have nothing to bring to the table but their bodies “The more self-confident a woman is, The more society calls her rude”. You walk into a cooperate institution and you see a woman in Nigeria the first thing that comes to your head is "She probably slept with the boss to be here" "Her parents bought her that position" "She's only there because she's beautiful".
A few months back I went to a restaurant with my male cousin, a lady parks her Tesla, she comes out of her car, she’s dressed so businesslike, I could tell she worked at a firm, or something similar, the first thing my cousin said was “I wonder what man, got her that car” seeing a woman being a boss of her own world is just not "Normal" to the society, but seeing a woman rely on a man is what society tags as "normal" A Nigerian musician by the name of Tiwa Savage is going through a divorce with her husband, because she is the breadwinner of the family, all of sudden the man felt emasculated as her put it on his social media "she took away my manhood". Now the question is why should a woman's success be a threat to a man? A documentary called Indian's daughter on Netflix caught my attention a young girl was raped and brutally murdered during the arrest, one of the rapists made a statement, “what would a decent young girl be doing walking around by 7 pm, she caused her death, she should have let us rape her quietly, a lot of girls get raped but they don't fight back so we let them go, but she fought us and we fought back also, and now she's dead" Men have this mentality that if a woman doesn't give it to us will we take it from her forcefully. So any woman who fights back is a threat. I am a feminist, and this doesn’t sit right with a lot of people, I had a man tell me that feminism was “un-African”, whatever “unAfrican” means, Personally, I missed the how-to-be-an-African memo.
A man and a woman, both working at the same jobs, the same positions and have the same qualifications but yet the man gets paid more because he is a man. So, in a way, men rule the world. A woman was raped at a concert in Enugu, a state in the eastern part of Nigeria. And the reactions of many Nigerians, was: “What was she putting on?” “She has brought such disgrace to her family” “She has lost her honor” How did she lose her honor? Has always been my question, who placed the honor of a woman in between her legs? It’s a patriarchal idea that getting raped would ruin a woman’s honor, why would the society place a woman’s honor again in between her legs? She didn’t place her honor there if anyone loses their honor when a woman is raped, it’s the rapist, not the woman who is raped. Boys and girls are undeniably different, biologically. But socialization exaggerates the differences, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling process. My sister and her husband are both medical doctors, they leave for work together and come back together, as exhausted as she is, she still does the household chores, and when her husband decides to feed their child, she says thank you to him after he’s done. Now, what if she saw this as perfectly normal, that he should, in fact, care for his Child.
New Guinea has been identified as the most dangerous place to live as a woman, the men beat up their wives, stab them and justify these silly actions as culture, “it’s our culture to beat up our wives, to correct them or they will end up wayward” but who beats up the husbands when the behave wayward is my question. So if it is, in fact, true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we must make it our culture. 9 out of 10 women in Papua, New Guinea have been physically assaulted and 50% have been raped. The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and UN women are two organizations working on helping women in Papua, New Guinea. The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against women, in 2010 made a comprehensive report focusing on the rights of women in Papua, New Guinea. They worked for hand in hand with the police force and the government of New Guinea to help create a safe place for women who escaped domestic violence, the committee also raised concern about health care services available to the women of New Guinea and currently supplies the country with contraception. However, only a third of women have access to contraception.
In 2010 the UN women made Papua, New Guinea its priority country in the UN Women’s strategic plan, and in that same year, the New Guinea government passed the Family Protection Act to protect women and children against domestic violence. In 2014 the PNG criminal code act was introduced and the aim of this law was to protect women accused of sorcery.
