SEMINAR - Changing Attitudes to Marriage Among Women in Papua New Guinea - 26 OCT 2015

Previous research among educated women in Papua New Guinea has revealed the desire of women in this cohort to avoid or delay marriage (Spark 2010; 2011). Financial independence from men plays a key role in educated womens choice to focus on work rather than domestic lives, as well as on whether or not they want to share these lives with a partner. Because educated and employed women often associate their agency with their urban status, it is interesting to consider the extent to which rural women are asserting their interests within the framework of Christian companionate marriage. In her influential study of Huli women, Holly Wardlow (2006) notes that while rural women in PNG can and do demonstrate a desire to position themselves outside the marriage system, they have varying degrees of success in doing so, with many seeking eventually to reintegrate themselves into their families and communities because of the high price and precarity of their autonomy (Wardlow 2006; see also Jolly et al. 2015).