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Poverty Measurement: What’s Gender Got to do with it? Findings from Fiji: Part 1
This short paper reports on planned research in Fiji, the first country in the Pacific to pilot a measure of poverty at an individual level from a gender perspective. Pacific... -
Home-Brewed Alcohol, Gender and Violence in the West Papuan Highlands
The production and consumption of home-brew in the highlands is adding a dangerous ingredient to already volatile ethnic, gendered, and political conditions. While scholars have... -
Witch hunts in Papua New Guinea’s Eastern Highlands Province: A Fieldwork Report
The issue of sorcery and witchcraft-related accusations and violence in Papua New Guinea is receiving increasing attention domestically and internationally. A growing body of... -
Emerging Women Leaders in Solomon Islands: The Aims and Activities of the...
This research shows that the young women who are part of the Young Women's Parliamentary Group are working to advance women’s participation and leadership in a range of ways in... -
Changing Market Culture in the Pacific
Addressing the multiple dimensions of gender inequality requires commitments by policy-makers, practitioners and scholars to transformative practices. One challenge is to... -
Measuring Poverty As If Gender Matters: Perspectives from Fieldwork in Fiji
This research project was aimed at synthesising and integrating various experiences and perspectives on poverty held both by poor women and men and by professional poverty... -
Papuan Perspectives on Family Planning, Fertility and Birth Control
Papuan perspectives on family planning have historically emphasised political concerns that reflect the tensions between the Indonesian state and indigenous rights – Papuans... -
Women’s Leadership in the Pacific
Within the spheres of politics, the bureaucracy, and civil society, this paper examines the literature in relation to: obstacles to women’s participation, success factors,... -
Political Representation and Women’s Empowerment in Samoa
Samoan women have achieved approximate equality to men in most modern spheres of government and the economy, but have never succeeded in winning more than five seats in the... -
Bougainville Young Women’s Leadership Research
For this research, 12 young Bougainvillean women were trained in research methods. Six teams of two women then undertook research in six districts, covering the three regions of... -
Pawa Blong Meri: Women Candidates in the 2015 Bougainville Election
The 2015 Bougainville election saw a record number of women candidates, and a record number of women were elected. While one in three open constituencies had at least one woman... -
Big Men Drink Beer; Drunk Big Men Do Not Hit Women
Numerous studies show obvious links between alcohol abuse and violence in Melanesia. In Papua New Guinea, alcohol is incorporated into sociality involving gift exchange and... -
The 2013 Survey on HIV in Tanah Papua: Gender, Ethnicity and ‘Casual Partners’
This paper reports that in Tanah Papua (the western half of the island of New Guinea, currently comprising the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua), there was an HIV... -
Developing Insecurity: Sorcery, Witchcraft and Melanesian Economic Development
This paper draws explicit links between witchcraft and sorcery practices and beliefs in Melanesia, and poor development outcomes. It notes four distinct categories of impact:... -
Sorcery Cases in Papua New Guinea’s Village Courts: Legal Innovation Part IV
The Sorcery Act criminalised the use of sorcery for ‘evil purposes’. It was repealed in 2013 in the wake of several high profile and gruesome killings related to sorcery... -
Putting Gender into the Equation: Impact Evaluation of Seasonal Worker Program
At the opening of the 2014 State of the Pacific Conference organised by the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop noted the... -
Using Mobile Phones to Track Anti-Witchcraft Violence in Papua New Guinea
This short paper details a pilot project using mobile phones to record and report data about accusations of witchcraft at funerals. The pilot is part of a growing body of work... -
Step-by-Step: Climbing the ‘Ladder of Freedom and Power’ in Fiji and PNG
Fiji and PNG were part of the World Bank’s qualitative study informing the World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development, for which local researchers organised... -
Women’s political and administrative leadership in the Pacific
There is growing evidence that at both national and sub-national level, the social capital of urban elites (male and female alike) does not translate into votes at the ballot... -
An Analysis of Judicial Sentencing Practices in SGBV Cases in PICs
This study analysed a random selection of 908 cases from seven Pacific Island countries, including 111 domestic violence cases and 787 sexual assault cases. Each case is...
