![]() ![]() Perhaps most importantly, they sought to protect village autonomy from external threats. They participated in inter-village trade, organized ceremonial events, and dominated the political negotiations of exchange, marital, and military alliances between clans and villages. Most of their work effort, however, occurred in the public arena. They also hunted sporadically and occasionally helped with child care. They built houses and constructed fences to protect gardens from predatory pigs. They felled trees for new garden sites in the forest and assisted with some crop planting. Men spent their adult lives doing different kinds of work. In old age, and usually ill-health, they were cared for by their own children and whiled away their time in the village doing small tasks and occasionally supervising older children left behind by other women working in gardens. ![]() Their babies were delivered without the assistance of midwives and they witnessed the early deaths of half of all newborns. Over the years, women were loyal producers of wealth and progeny for their husbands' clans. During most of their adult lives, however, women's waking hours were spent in a constant sequence of productive tasks within the domestic sphere. Women's daily work regimen changed somewhat with the seasons and occasionally was interrupted by illness, visitors, warfare, and social and ceremonial events. For a few days each month, women were confined to menstrual huts to protect others from what was assumed to be their dangerously polluting condition. They made clothing and net bags from tree bark they spun into twine, activities that occupied their hands continually when freed from other tasks. Women were also responsible for child care, rearing and feeding of small household pig herds, collecting and transporting firewood, and preparing and cooking food. Without pack animals or vehicular roads, women were the major means of transporting all types of goods in this mountainous terrain. Gradually, women were integrated into the work and social routines of their husbands' clans, where they helped clear and plant the numerous household garden plots and did most of the tending, harvesting, and transporting of crops. As young adults, women left their families to marry men who they may or may not have chosen as husbands and who often lived in neighboring communities. As children, women lived with their mothers and siblings in houses separate from those of their fathers, who resided with other adult men and initiated boys in communal men's houses. As part of a small linguistic group of 1,400 people living in eight communities in a relatively remote rural area of the Eastern Highlands, from an early age their lives were closely tied to the continuous labors of subsistence agriculture on which the local livelihood depends. The lives of Awa women have never been easy. Women and men in Papua New Guinea, as in most societies, abide in rather separate, but interrelated, social domains defined by cultural notions of "maleness" and "femaleness" overtly expressed in such things as dress, physical comportment, social attitudes, responsibilities and sexual divisions of labor. More important, however, their sexual antagonism is the basic complementarity of the sexes. As an Awa man put it, "The mouth of a good woman is not fastened shut." Verbal altercations are everyday occurrences and physical violence is not uncommon, with women in general, "giving as good as they get." Awa women, then, are not easily dominated or dismissed they vigorously defend their domain against all intrusions. Certainly, the Awa people openly air their disagreements and occasionally confront each other to protest unacceptable treatment. Studies of gender in Papua New Guinea discuss the antagonism between the sexes. The lives of contemporary Awa women are better understood in relation to the lives of Awa men. ![]() Despite the lack of modern amenities and attentions, Awa women have been deeply affected by their gradual incorporation into the world economy and have become increasingly exploited. ![]() Although they now wear purchased clothing, have steel shovels and machetes, and exercise a bit more control over their personal destinies, Awa women still spend most of their time in domestic production and child care, have inadequate medical care for themselves and their families, and rarely venture beyond the local region. The usual signs of "development" - roads, schools, health clinics, retail stores - still are at least a one-day walk away, and government services, such as agricultural extension, medical aid, and police and judicial services, are rarely available locally. Exploited laborers on the capitalist fringeĪfter a quarter-century as colonial subjects and nearly a decade as citizens of the new nation-state of Papua New Guinea, Awa women have experienced many changes, but few improvements, in their lives. ![]()
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