Paper short abstract:

I demonstrate why colonial urban economies and their contemporary continuations may have increased sexual violence against women in a context of increased awareness of 'women's empowerment' and 'gender equality' in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I consider the ways colonial infrastructure, urbanisation, and increasing alienation have impacted local taboos, protocols, and prohibitions that once kept women safe(r) from sexual violence. As many researchers focused on this area of research in Papua New Guinea have highlighted, alcohol, drugs, and increasing commoditisation have led to transformations in sexual relations between men and women. However, the social and material landscapes created through colonisation (e.g., infrastructure and consumption patterns) require further attention.

During fieldwork in Goroka, a market town in the Eastern Highlands, in 2014, while focusing on market women and food exchanges, I did not expect to come into contact with men who would tell me stories of sexual violence they themselves had committed. However, in quite unexpected circumstances, men narrated to me when, why, and how they had come to be involved in rape and sexual violence in the period following Papua New Guinea's independence (1975). Other men explained that there were very clear rules that protected women in the pre-colonial and early colonial era but that these had dwindled with urbanisation and the decline of "tumbuna pasin" (ancestral ways).