Gender and Social Change: New Forms of Independence for Simbu Women

Simbu women were prepared in their youth for a life of sexual segregation, domestic independence and hard work for their husband's agnates in gardens and raising pigs. During the Australian colonial period in highlands Papua New Guinea more men than women had opportunity for education, occupations and travel. Men's elite society retains its competitive style as it becomes stratified; political and economic success depend upon rural support. Today, as a few women become economically independent they move out of rural women's roles. Thus there is a continuity of rural‐urban ties for men in political affairs and economic achievement, while ties of urban women to their families and rural communities are personal, not based upon political and economic relations.