WOMEN’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT AMONG COFFEE SMALLHOLDERS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA Richard Eves and Asha Titus WOMEN’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT AMONG COFFEE SMALLHOLDERS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA Richard Eves and Asha Titus August 2020 CONTENTS Contents iii Abbreviations v Acknowledgements vii Note on Names vii Executive Summary ix Introduction 1 Coffee in Papua New Guinea 2 Background to the Research 2 Key Questions 3 Methodology 3 Indicators of Women’s Empowerment 5 Research Sites 6 Field-Site 1: Goroka District 7 Field-Site 2: Unggai-Bena District 8 Field-Site 3: Okapa District 1 and 2 9 Gender in Papua New Guinea 9 Gender in the Highlands 10 Part I. The Coffee Value Chain 13 Coffee Labour 14 Coffee Garden Preparation and Planting 16 Coffee Garden Maintenance 19 Picking and Processing the Coffee 23 Processing Coffee with Pulper 24 Processing Coffee without Pulper 26 Selling Coffee 28 Managing Coffee Money 30 Commercial Gardening 31 Part II. Access to and Control over Resources 35 Ownership of Land and Property 35 Income 37 Household Income 37 Women’s Own Income 41 Women’s Income Sources 42 Women’s Sources of Income in Last Year by Research Site 43 Main Sources of Women’s Income 45 Men’s Income Sources 45 Main Sources of Men’s Income 47 Department of Pacific Affairs iii Part III. Financial Inclusion 49 Financial Inclusion in Papua New Guinea 49 Financial Inclusion for Coffee Smallholders 49 Saving 51 Financial Competency 52 Women’s Educational Attainment 53 Language Facility 54 Proficiency in Numeracy 54 Part IV. Household Decision-Making 57 Coffee Production 58 Other Cash Crop Production 59 Subsistence and Housing Management Decisions 59 Involvement in General Decisions — Children 61 Spending Money 62 Decisions about Spending on Self or Others 62 Decisions about Household Spending 64 Decisions about Saving and Borrowing 65 Financial Decision-Making 67 Household Income Management 67 Independent Income Management 68 Part V. Household Labour 71 Roles in Household Labour 72 Conflicts over Labour 77 Part VI. Domestic Conflicts 79 Conflicts over Coffee Income 80 Men’s Resource Depleting Behaviour 81 Part VII. Intimate Partner Violence 85 Physical Violence 86 Sexual Violence 90 Emotional Violence 93 Controlling Behaviour 97 Part VIII. Opinions on Violence Against Women 101 Sexual Rights 104 Reproductive Rights 106 Bride Price 107 Part IX. Gender Opinions 111 Opinions on Sharing Household Duties 111 Opinions on Women’s Rights 112 Opinions on Position of Women 112 iv Women’s Economic Empowerment among Coffee Smallholders Opinions on Women’s Property Rights 113 Opinions on Women’s Political Rights 113 Opinions on Women’s Equality in Education 114 Opinions on Women’s Political Roles 114 Opinions on Arranged Marriages 115 Part X. What Does the Research Tell Us? 117 Appendix 1 — Case Studies 121 Life Story 1 121 Life Story 2 122 Life Story 3 122 Life Story 4 123 Life Story 5 124 Life Story 6 125 Life Story 7 125 Endnotes 128 References 133 Department of Pacific Affairs v ABBREVIATIONS ADB Asian Development Bank ANGAU Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women CISP Coffee Industry Support Project DASF Department of Agriculture, Stock and Fisheries DPA Department of Pacific Affairs GDP Gross domestic product GII Gender Inequality Index HOAC Highlands Organic Agricultural Cooperative ICO International Coffee Organization IPO Interim Protection Order IWDA International Women’s Development Agency K Kina LRC Law Reform Commission NGO Non-government organisation NSRRT National Sex and Reproduction Research Team PFIP Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme PMV Public motor vehicle PNG Papua New Guinea UNDP United Nations Development Programme SDA Seventh-day Adventist SIDA Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency SSGM State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program STI Sexually transmissible infection VCT Voluntary counselling and testing WHO World Health Organization vi Women’s Economic Empowerment among Coffee Smallholders ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research has been funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development. The views expressed in this publication are the authors’ alone and are not necessarily the views of the Australian Government. The research was undertaken as part of the larger research project, Do No Harm: Understanding the Relationship between Women’s Economic Empowerment and Violence against Women in Melanesia, a collaboration between the Department of Pacific Affairs (formerly State, Society and Governance in Melanesia) and IWDA (International Women’s Development Agency) that involved working with CARE International’s Coffee Industry Support Project (CISP). The research team comprised Gabriella Marimyas, Garry Matthew, Lavinia Magiar, Grace Mondiai, Charles Iha, Judy Andreas, Russell Ada and Jonathan Mathew. The authors offer grateful thanks to the researchers from CARE and to Anna Bryan of CARE’s Coffee Industry Support Project for her commitment to and support for the research. We also wish to thank and acknowledge the generosity of the men and women in the communities we visited and, especially, their willingness to participate in the research or to help the research in other ways. We also thank Juneth Maima and other members of the Sukapass Coffee Growers’ Cooperative in Goroka District, Sallyn Lomutopa and other members of the Lower Unggai Community Development Foundation in Unggai-Bena District, Sewege Moa and Andrew Sarapo and other members of Highlands Organic Agricultural Cooperative (HOAC) in Okapa District. Note on Names Apart from the acknowledgements above, all names used in this report are pseudonyms. Research was undertaken in Goroka District, Unggai-Bena District and at two sites in Okapa District, referred to as Okapa District 1 and Okapa District 2. Figures have been rounded off to one decimal point. If the decimal digit is five or more, it has been rounded up. All calculations exclude missing data. Department of Pacific Affairs vii Source: Richard Eves viii Women’s Economic Empowerment among Coffee Smallholders EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Women’s economic empowerment is an important component of the Australian Government’s aid policy and programming in the Pacific (CoA 2014:8, 16, 25; 2015; 2016). There is a critical need for research to provide an understanding of the challenges to realising the goal of women’s economic empowerment and an evidence base from which development programming can proceed. This report details findings of research undertaken with coffee smallholders at four sites in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea, comprising a quantitative survey of 143 households and qualitative interviews with 64 respondents, both male and female. The research was undertaken as part of the Do No Harm research project, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development program. Coffee is one of Papua New Guinea’s most valuable export crops. It is a vital part of the local economy in several of Papua New Guinea’s highland provinces, with an estimated 400,000 smallholders growing coffee and nearly three million people reliant on income from it. Historically, coffee has been considered a men’s crop, since it is planted on land belonging to men, and consequently men tend to monopolise the income from its sale even today when women do a substantial amount of labour in the coffee value chain. The research found that despite some gains for women and greater awareness of ‘gender equality’, particularly in the two research sites close to the provincial capital of Goroka, women continue to be disregarded, or put on the ‘last page’, as one woman described it. Though there has been a lessening of the more rigid traditions of gender segregation that were practised in many parts of the Eastern Highlands in the past, gender norms and roles continue to impact negatively on women. Coffee labour is accepted as both men’s and women’s work, though gender determines the particular kinds of labour they normally do. This segregation of labour reflects, to some extent, the types of labour men and women traditionally do in the agricultural sphere. As has often been noted, women’s role in coffee production is usually in the least skilled aspects of the work, typically in the labour intensive and time-consuming tasks, such as harvesting, washing and processing. Men take the tasks requiring some knowledge of coffee technology, such as planting, shading, fencing and pruning (Barnes 1981:274). Above all, men control the planning of the production process and the sale of coffee — ‘standing up at the scale’ as one woman referred to it. Our research found that women are more likely to have the lead role in commercial gardening and the selling of fresh produce, largely because the income from this is much lower than that from coffee. Men refer to the income from coffee as ‘heavy money’, meaning that it produces substantial amounts of money compared to the insignificant amounts they believe other cash crops make. We found that almost 70 per cent (69.6%) of women had their own income, though this ranges from a high of 85.7 per cent of women in Unggai-Bena District, to a low of 50 per cent in Okapa District 2. Women had fewer means of earning than men, with the most common income generator for them being garden produce (38.5%), followed by coffee (24.5%). The most common income generator for men was coffee (76.3%), followed by garden produce (30.5%). However, in the last year, men’s main source of income was coffee (65.9%), followed by paid employment (10.9%). The research found that only a quarter (25%) of households had a bank account, with a high of 39.4 per cent of households in Goroka District, dropping to 14.8 per cent in Okapa District 2, indicating that proximity to Goroka is a significant determining factor.