Gender inequality a struggle

By OGIA MIAMEL
Gender inequality is a daily struggle for women in Papua New Guinea. It is not an issue faced only in PNG but a global issue as well.
The idealistic perception that women are inferior to men and cannot be seen on an equal level goes deep into cultural norms to the civilised world of today.
The World Economic Forum 2016 Global Gender Gap Report published in 2016 states that women won’t be paid the same as men for another 170 years. The report looks at 144 countries’ health, education, economic participation and political empowerment. This is an example of how deep inequality is rooted in the world’s system.
Women in PNG are given a rare opportunity to share their experience of inequality in writing and artwork to socially advocate gender equality in the country.
This is a project of a young Papua New Guinean aspiring writer Rashmii Bell.
Bell received her inspiration from the literary work that was done to address the gender inequality in India following the 2012 horrific gang-rape of Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old paramedical student in India.
This incident sparked widespread outrage and threw the Indian government into the spotlight to immediately revisit some of its laws to ensure better treatment and protection of girls and women.
After the incident, a team of 19 writers from different age groups, religions, professions, political and sexual orientations composed individual accounts of the struggle of being a woman in a contemporary Indian society.
All their work was compiled in the 2016 collection of essays and short stories titled, Walking Towards Ourselves: Indian Women Tell Their Stories.
Some of these personal struggles are similar to Papua New Guineans, things such as bride price, sexual orientation, economic abuse within relationships and moral shaming for dress choice.
Bell says it was from such example of literary social activism that she drew inspiration for the title of her work My Walk To Equality.
The literary project asks for women to submit articles, short stories, essays and poems of a maximum 1000 words,  or illustrations. It aims to document the voices of PNG women from diverse backgrounds.
The theme is drawn from one of the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals, which PNG is working towards achieving to improve the life of its citizens.
The project hopes to receive material that demonstrates the individual strength of PNG women in battling inequality in urban and rural areas of the country. Work will be selected for publication in an anthology that will be published on International Women’s Day 2017. It will be published by Pukpuk Publications, a not-for-profit publisher dedicated to supporting and promoting PNG-authored literature.
It is important that the women of PNG are recognised as active participants to creating positive change.
Recording this in a book is a way to ensure that their contributions are documented for all to read, today and in the future, according to Bell.
Whether it be family and sexual violence, access to safe and compassionate health care and education or promoting non-discriminatory workplace practices, she continues to hold the view that in issues of inequality, both sides of the equation must participate.
“I am encouraged by my fellow Papua New Guinean women writers whose submissions acknowledge the contributions, significance and aspirations of PNGs boys and men as supporters of women in reducing inequality,” Bell said.