West Sepik Province Development: The Forgotten Voice

“Taim yu tingim development, plis tingim mipla ol meri na liklik ol lain long ples”

This article aims to point out that our women and local village people’s voice in development is very important for West Sepik Province to build a strong socioeconomic baseline that will boost our Province’s development.

 

Introduction

The distinction within the human species that we now call gender has long been identified and celebrated respectively since the beginning of time. The typical Melanesian society since the days of the forefathers and long before the arrival of the explorers and colonisers have only celebrated the two distinctions, that of male and female. In the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, the West Sepik people have generally accepted gender as man and woman. This distinction for so long has played a pivotal role in the existence of our people even to date. Thus, this distinction and the understanding of development created by this distinction is of paramount importance to the progress of our province in development.

This article seeks to assert that the consideration of the women and village people’s perspective in development is very crucial to developing a balance development approach that leaves no one behind.

Importance of the female voice in development

The consideration of female perspective in development is very important. For a very long time, West Sepik Province does not have sufficient women voice in the decision making bodies that specifically deals with development. Such absenteeism affects their voice in development agendas. This may have well become a stumbling block to the Province’s development in respective of the gender perspective.

Melanesian women traditionally throughout the history of this nation have played very important roles for the survival of their family. Though men predominantly in most parts of the country are revered and held in high esteem than women, women are precious and essential to the survival of this nation. They constitute the basic building blocks of development in our country, thus cultural norms should not impede their empowerment and participation in development activities.

To put the above mentioned points into perspective, a study conducted in Nigeria by Ajala (2016) highlight that existing traditional beliefs, cultural norms and customary practices is the root cause for women poverty in Nigeria. This may also be true to other developing countries in the world and our Melanesian experiences have reflected this common challenge.

All too often we see women sitting in the market place selling their garden produce and participating in SMEs and other informal business to keep their family going. Ray (2016) affirm that as far as development is concerned, the physical and emotional burdens of accessing daily necessities such as food, fuel and water are high on the priority list for women as opposed to men. Henceforth, a very balanced development approach in our province will be an approach that will not leave women (in this I’m saying all women including our women that make up the rural population) behind.

Gender and their influence on development

Cai, Fan and Du (2016) identified that though women are positive, they show lower levels of attitude towards technology and changes.  This indicates that many sophisticated development projects thought of by our leaders and government will only benefit the fortunate ones who are exposed to technology and other forms of development. The ordinary female villagers and local village men to some extent will not be able to flow and adapt to development themselves in this trend.

He and Freeman (2010) also confirmed that men are more technology oriented than women because of the exposure, participation and experience with technology. This study by He and Freeman was conducted among college students. However, considering our women in the rural areas of our province with the prevalent high illiteracy rate, fancy development projects that does not consider this simple fact is destined to leave our rural men and women folk behind.

Due to the limitation of this article, other supporting studies will not be further discussed in this section. However, there is indeed a huge difference in the way women and men perceive, accept and participate in development practises and change.  Therefore, it is justice to consider and implement development in the framework of both male and female perspective of development in our province. By championing this process we will fulfil our current Government’s vision of leaving no one behind in development.

Development Practices that will boost our Society

Development projects that will heavily involve all our women including the women in the rural parts of our province is the ideal development project that should be prioritised by our provincial and district development leaders and machineries.

Generally in Papua New Guinea, women perceive agriculture (farming/gardening) with good access to market and marketing services and small business (SMEs) as important forms of development. According Mishra and Smyth (2016), over seventy to eighty percentages of women are involved in informal business while only thirty five percentages or less are engaged in formal business in PNG. This study indicates that informal businesses that are conducted by women should receive more empowerment as they contribute more to the development of the family unit, community, district and province at large. Such informal businesses as described by Mishra and Smyth represents selling of garden food at the market, sea food, road side market and other informal businesses.

Rosenbach and Schmidt (2019)  recently confirmed that in PNG, agricultural trade is mostly owned by women while non- farming enterprises is at most like such as transport vehicles and others is owned by men.  The study conducted by these two authors serves as a signal light for the aligning of our development agendas and priorities. More government support and women empowerment in the area of agriculture trade in our province would see a greater increase in the development at all levels of our society. On this note, it is of high importance that West Sepik Province collectively as a people and government should embrace the agricultural development initiated and spearheaded by the East Sepik Provincial Government.

In addition, as per discussed by Rosenbach and Schmidt, proper basic services such as roads, wharves and airstrips should also be key priorities in development. Support given in this area should also enable our local male population to be engaged in their own development pursuits as they are more non-farming enterprises’ development oriented.

On the other hand, Mandie-Filer (2017) strongly assert that, key to women empowerment is through providing safe and accessible educational opportunities to our women folk and this includes the provision of best health care and facilities. Moreover, I would add in the light of the discussed articles, that the main wheel that drives individual development, especially the illiterate and base level people of our communities as highlighted would be through focussing on the agricultural trade to empower our women folk to create a strong local socioeconomic baseline before looking at other areas.

Conclusion

The modelling of our province in the pattern of development demonstrated by the Western countries is a self- destructive practice that leads to underdevelopment. Instead, let us empower our traditional way of development that is very inclusive and incorporates everyone in the very fabric of our society.

Development practices that incorporates everyone and boosts the very fabric of the society should be given the first priority. In this context, development practices that empower women and small village people should be given first priority by our provincial government and our districts.

Development projects such as a creation of good markets and marketing system for garden produce and fish is very important. The marketing system should include providing a very good market for the cocoa, vanilla, oil palm, copra and other agricultural and seafood products in general. Such projects will empower the very unfortunate local people who very much depend on agriculture and fishing for their livelihoods.

Furthermore, accessibility is another important factor that is worth considering, thus basic services such as roads, wharves and airstrips should be developed and continuously maintained. It is through this development approach that we can empower our local indigenous population who have no skills and expertise but solely rely on their land, sea and water for survival.

Reference

Ajala, T. (2016). Social construction of gender roles and women’s poverty in African societies: The case of the Nigerian woman. International Journal of Gender and Women Studies, 4(2), 1-10. doi: 10.15640/ijgws.v4n2pl  

Cai, Z., Fan, X. & Du, J. (2016). Gender and attitude toward technology use: A meta-analysis. Accessed from www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu

He, J., & Freeman, L. A. (2010). Are men more technology-oriented than women? The role of gender on the development of general computer self-efficacy or college students.  Journal of Information Systems Education, 21(2), 203-212.

Mandie-Filer, A. (2017). Women in Papua New Guinea: Distance education as a means for educational advancement. In Toward New Horizons for Women in Distance Education (pp. 129-136). Routledge.

Mishra, V., & Smyth, R. L. (2016). A scoping study to provide an assessment of SME policy priority areas for Papua New Guinea. National Research Institute.

Ray, I. (2016). Investing in gender-equal sustainable development. UN.

Rosenbach, G., Schmidt, E. (2019). Evaluating the welfare effects of nonfarm enterprises on rural households in Papua New Guinea. International Food Policy Research.  University of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby, PNG.

*Only one picture is the author's picture while the others are accessed from google