GENDER inequality results from male bias operating at different levels of society.
Male bias is defined as the gendered nature of economic structures and processes, and political structures and processes.
The latter points need to be stressed and included because of its intrinsic bearing on processes of empowerment.
Women’s ability to exercise power relative to men has very much to do with the unequal and gendered nature of political structures and process from micro to the macro level.
In the pre-colonial PNG, gender roles were separate and different but of mutual value, hence in world terms equalitarian.
Women in pre-colonial societies were decisions makers in their own rights and exerted powerful influence in important social events.
In contemporary PNG, gender roles remain distinct but gender relations have become unequal.
Women have lost much of their influences and their roles, although still significance; continue to be marginalised and very much neglected by policy makers.
As a result of male privilege in all aspects of contemporary life, gender relations can be appropriately be characterised as a relation of domination and subordination.
The concepts of inequality, subordination, domination and the public, private or social, economic, political distinctions are rightly situated within the context of contemporary PNG.
The nature of formal political participation in an overwhelming male arena has been a major socio cultural factor, which makes it difficult for women to stand for national election.
Men see politics as man’s game. Equal participation of women in decision making in public life is far from reality.
Over the years, only a handful of women were able to participate in national and provincial political arena.
Gender cut across every social relation such as class, race and ethnicity.
Our sex, male or female, is biological but culture interprets the feminine and masculine roles.
Thus, every society has different scripts for its members to follow as they learn to act out their feminine or masculine roles.
The fact that different societies have different ideas about appropriate ways for women and men to behave should be clear just how far removed gender roles are from their origins in our biological sex.
The basis of these similarities is their biological sex whilst the differences are determined by their varied socio-economic, political and social or cultural society.
Women are making demands that they should be seen as mutual partners rather than unequal partners to men in contemporary PNG, a message that is embedded in PNG’s pre-colonial gender relations.
The evidence on the high private social returns to invest in women and girls cannot be ignored.
By directing public resources towards policies and projects that reduced gender inequality, policy makers not only promote equality but also lay the groundwork for slower population growth, greater labour productivity, a higher rate of human capital formation and stronger economic growth.
Despite being under-represented in all institutional formal spheres of contemporary life, women in PNG have seized opportunities and have shown every intention to challenge and move beyond obstacles to their development both at personal and collective level and for national development.
 
Holpas Naizo
Queensland