‘I won’t go hungry if he’s not around’: ‘Working class’ urban Melanesian women’s agency in intimate relationships

‘Two different worlds’: Papua New Guinean women working in development in Port Moresby

“…This overlooks that many come from other provinces and are thus no more 'local' than expatriates. As I have noted elsewhere (see Spark, 2017a;Spark, 2017b;Spark, 2020), employed Papua New Guinean women typically contribute to the livelihoods of others, including paying to accommodate extended family. Not only do they face the challenge of finding adequate housing in an aggressively expensive city, the difficulties of doing so are exacerbated by the presence of expatriates whose employers pay a high price for secure and comfortable lodgings (see also (Carr et al, 2010) for a discussion of the ways in which renumeration difference undermine poverty reduction work).…”

“…Citing some of the scholars whom she considers to have taken an intersectional approach to understanding life in the urban Pacific (including, for example, (Spark, ; Cummings, ; Anderson, ; Demian, ; Spark, ; Spark, ), Wardlow notes that ‘all of these scholars trace some of these gendered urban dynamics back to the colonial history of urban space in Pacific towns and cities – specifically, the history of urban space as white and male’ (Wardlow, ). This is true and there have been some attempts to account for colonialism, race, class and gender (see for example, Inglis, ; Johnson, ; Gewertz and Errington, ; Demian, ).…”

Gender Equality Theology and Essentialism: Catholic Responses to Gender‐Based Violence and Inequality in Papua New Guinea

“…For example, as argued by Beer (2018:349) ‘PNG's middle‐class women are responding to new agendas of gender equity and participation set by international views regarding the rights of women’ (see also Hemer 2017). As detailed in Spark's work (2017:123) in PNG's capital Port Moresby, urban educated working‐class women feel that Christianity promotes gender equity, with no preference for men to take the upper hand. However, in both similar and other settings, Christian women and men may firmly posit the husband as head of the family (Anderson 2012a:239; Eves 2012:4; Hermkens 2008).…”

Gendered Ambition and Disappointment: Women and Men in a Vernacular Language Education Movement in Melanesia

“…For such women, 'money changes everything' (Macintyre, 2011b). A degree of economic independence has allowed them to reject bonds of marriage to husbands who have been taught for generations that they have the God-and custom-given right to dominate their wives (see also Zimmer-Tamakoshi, 1998;Spark, 2011Spark, , 2017. Such independent women are often savagely critiqued-accused of embracing global human rights discourses and the decadent individualist lifestyles that go with them (Macintyre, 2000(Macintyre, , 2012 see also Jolly, 1996;Taylor, 2008).…”