Reckoning With Gender Inequality in the Field
I thought that I would use this section to reflect a bit on my experiences over the past few years. When reflecting on what I wanted to write about – about issues that I had encountered, noticed, etc… that could be important to think about beyond the academic context that I have been living in for the past few years. One of the big issues that came to my mind was of gender inequality in Papua New Guinea. It is something which I did address in my doctoral research, but to only address it through academic routes feels somewhat unsatisfying, as it is something that affects so many individuals’ lives in so many ways.
To contextualize, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork based out of New Ireland, an island region of Papua New Guinea. For this, I had the privilege to spend a few months primarily living out of a village in the region and learning from the people around me. Though I also travelled around the region and to a couple of other locations as needed. This was an amazing opportunity and life experience – it definitely taught me a lot and I made a lot of amazing connections. Before leaving, as any good researcher would (and probably any traveler really), I did my research on the region. One of the things that this turned up was the deep gender inequality in the region and country. In 2014 it ranked 140 out of 155 countries on the Gender Inequality Index, there are extremely high rates of gender based violence in the country and only nine women have ever been elected to the country’s Parliament since the country’s independence in 1975. These numbers are not difficult to find and paint a stark picture. In fact, I encountered one statistic according to which in a particular region of the country 100% of women have experienced gender based violence – of course when I read that particular statistic I was in shock and slightly relieved that I wasn’t heading to that region. Then, for a moment, my analytical brain got skeptical (or perhaps hopeful?), after all 100% of a survey group doesn’t have to mean 100% of the population. But, regardless of detailed accuracy the statistic speaks to trends in that particular region and instills a weariness in those approaching.
My field site was located in a traditionally matrilineal area, and one with much less of a problem in terms of gender based violence. Matrilineality, though it is not to be confused with matriarchy, has a tendency to point to a higher status within society for women. This is true. However, it is interesting to examine the ways in which it interacts with particular local instantiations of patriarchal structures. As structures of hereditary passing from mother to offspring exist both alongside and within structures which carry power between generations of men. And, indeed, by the end of my field stay I was intrigued by the ways in which local patriarchal structures had mixed with colonial patriarchal structures such that women’s traditional formal lines of inheritance did not necessarily translate into everyday authority or autonomy.
On entering the field, my intention had been to focus primarily on my research interests – as they related to various customary practices. I knew that I would encounter challenges, as the gender norms on the ground did not align with my own. But I did not expect them to affect my work too much and thought that it might be best to not focus on these, perhaps examine them a bit but leave this material as a side note for an article perhaps. Despite the relative calmness of the area in which I lived I was still shocked by some of what I witnessed and by the ways in which patriarchy, coming from many places, structured and restricted life. So, I came to the conclusion that I needed to address these issues, at least to some extent, in my work.
Naively I set out to get more information on this topic by asking directly about it. At times this worked – there were occasional meetings with women’s organisations in the community, I attended these and asked people about them. This aligned with my general tendency to ask a lot about pretty much anything that I noticed happening. People shared their thoughts about these organisations (a lot of which revolved around the corruption within them – as within most structures of government). And, after I had left the field, it worked when I sought out interviews with individuals who had worked specifically on gender inequality in the country. What did not work, was when I asked people directly about these questions – about anything regarding conceptions of gender and gender roles or issues of gender equality/inequality. When I sought out interviews with people who were not working in the sector, though they answered my messages positively, they never got around to answering my questions. As I had found out during my time in the field this is an approach often taken to things that one does not want to do, does not agree with, or feel worthwhile, etc… It is polite, but doesn’t engage.
In terms of my doctoral thesis, these polite refusals both were and were not issues. Sure, I often did not get information which would have been valuable. But, the fact that they did not answer, the ways in which they went about not answering and when they did and did not do this were also very valuable pieces of information. For the purpose of writing up theoretical analyses this type of information worked well too.
Though I did not have the chance to work hand in hand with organisations or policy, etc… in the region. I would argue that it is also important pieces of information for these perhaps more pragmatic agents. Many of these deal with issues of gender inequality in the region (the issue which is usually most focused on being gender based violence). What this information indicates is that organisations (etc…) going into the region with the aim of improving gender relations, inequalities, etc… may at times have to do so in ways that do not explicitly acknowledge this purpose. To be fair, this is something which many are already aware of and which already shapes many approaches to work in the region (not just in Papua New Guinea, but in many countries in the south pacific).
There are many ways of doing this, as there are many issues which affect everybody, but the burdens of which are borne more heavily by women. These are issues like access to water, sanitation and electricity, which affect everybody, but since most domestic work is the responsibility of women any improvements in these areas will ease the lives of women and girls in particular. The same goes for access to education, and access to paid employment. These are particularly important as they are issues that affect most of the population in the region, meaning that they will be well received. The impact of any developments will be felt by all, regardless of gender, but even more so by women as economic independence (and the education which facilitates it) frees women from dependence on husbands and family members who may be (or become) violent.
In addition to initiatives that often come in from the outside, a lot is being achieved at local levels, through women’s groups that are church affiliated. I remember one particular woman who took the time to tell me about her trip to a city nearby where she and many other women had learned about preaching. Beforehand she had told me that she had wanted to continue school when younger, but had been unable to due to her marriage and the need to care for her children. This was clearly a means, within such constraints, for self-development, travel, etc…. And while this particular opportunity had been available to her because her family had sufficient means to pay her travels to the city, many other local initiatives functioned along similar lines. There were many weekly women’s meetings, organised under the auspices of the various local churches – times where women could meet not just for prayer but also to discuss important issues in the community and to share skills. These were accepted, not like the highly criticized local branches of the national effort.
This was all difficult for me to digest, coming from my own perspectives, very much a western liberal equality feminist (as far as I can tell that is the most accurate label for my beliefs), with no history of church involvement but a lot of knowledge regarding how missions and colonialism in the region had been intertwined. My impulses would have been to base any future actions, programs, etc… on the explicit instruction of gender equality and of female empowerment, as well as to separate these initiatives from the church. However, fieldwork and the time it gave me to really live in that particular place and with those particular people made it clear that these approaches would unlikely gain much traction. If one was to work on improving gender inequalities in this particular time and place the approach would have to be somewhat indirect and include existing and trusted institutions, even when these where patriarchal in nature. The existing context would not favour other initiatives.
The Quiet Devaluation of Mobility
Over the past few years, I’ve found myself increasingly frustrated by how difficult international mobility has become. I’ve moved around a lot over the course of my life, and I would like to continue doing so. Yet as I get older, and as public and institutional narratives around travel and mobility shift, this has become noticeably harder.
What strikes me most is not just the difficulty itself, but how sharply it contradicts other dominant narratives of our time. We are frequently told that we are too online, too disconnected from the world and from one another. We know and acknowledge that virtual connection does not replace being physically present, that embodied, in-person experience matters for our wellbeing and for how we relate to others.
And yet, at the same time, moving through the world in person has become increasingly constrained. Entry and exit rules are tightening, bureaucratic requirements multiplying, and international mobility appears to be quietly devalued. I want to use this space to reflect on some of these contradictions, and on how they shape academic life, work, and the ways we imagine our futures.
One place where this contradiction becomes particularly visible is in the everyday bureaucratic realities of working across borders. Entry and exit rules are tightening, and the administrative burden associated with international hiring has grown. I have felt this personally: finding employment internationally has become increasingly difficult, not because skilled workers are explicitly excluded, but because many requirements place heavy responsibilities and risks on employers, making sponsorship something institutions are reluctant to take on.
This is particularly striking in academia. Universities have a reputation for fostering critical dialogues, thinking, and building ideas in ways that are not limited by geography. Yet, many will not sponsor visas, even for multi year positions. Academia, as an institution, is based on principals of a exchange of ideas, of being a place for freedom of thought based on the sharing and building of ideas. Part of this is dependent on people from many different places coming together under one figurative roof (though perhaps many literal roofs) to engage in these activities. When it comes to paying students universities are often well prepared to assist them with visas and entry/exit requirements, but the same is often not true of paid positions such as post-docs and lower level teaching positions, even though these may be multi-year positions with decent salaries.
Further, this is in an environment where it is commonly cited that obtaining one’s degrees at different universities is well seen, as is having participated in international mobility. One of the common critiques given to the endless line of post-docs that many go through is that job location gets in the way of the building of a settled family life, as one must go wherever one gets the next contract. Yet, when one goes about trying to find contracts in different locations – something which is to a certain degree expected and supposed to look good career wise – it is often impossible to apply for positions without already having the right to work in that country. What is striking is how rarely these contradictions are addressed, even as bureaucracy quietly constrains mobility.
This is not an isolated contradiction. Versions of the same tension appear well beyond academic life, particularly in how we talk about connection, presence, and technology. There is a lot of criticism of social media and our chronic online-ness. People everywhere are frustrated and it is by now well known and even accepted that we get far too little in person contact with other people (as well as the world itself – just think of the need to touch grass) and that this is incredibly bad for us, that it is outright unhealthy for our physiological and mental health.
Yet, since this social connectedness to the world has arisen there has also been a decrease in actual in person global connectedness. International mobility has gradually been devalued and, globally, immigration procedures have become increasingly difficult, border security stronger and stricter. There are narratives of the danger of people coming from outside one’s country (nothing new, but it has been trending upwards for a few years now). Even at the level of rhetoric, there is great moral emphasis placed on roots – on rooting oneself, on finding one’s roots, on identities that are strongly tied to place. All of which, at a minimum, turns attention away from the great benefits of global mobility of individuals, and the ease of doing so.
As a young millennial it often feels as if I grew up in a world that hopefully emphasized the ways we were living in an increasingly globally interconnected world and valued this movement for the potentials that it carried. And, as I hit university and adulthood there was a gradual move away from this. Not like a switch suddenly flipped, but within a few years of my reaching adulthood emphasis was placed on home, being rooted and on place-oriented identities. This is not to be nostalgic for some better time, it is to say that over the last decade (maybe a decade and a half) narratives have changed a great deal, and that these are having effects on how the world works: how sociocultural systems are built, how political systems are built and even how bureaucracy develops.
The reasons I have thought through these particular issues are very personal. I have had the luck to be able to move around the globe and, now, due to the increasing difficulty it presents have become highly frustrated. Especially as I have seen first-hand that many of the promises that it presented are true. Global mobility leads individuals to have a greater understanding of their relative places in the world, of the multiple ways of existence there can be, of the variety of beliefs and styles of life that exist and, often, work quite well (though sometimes they don’t – and that is important information too). It breeds empathy and diminishes lines that may divide us. This is important, stronger divisions between us and ‘other’ lead to more conflict, as we fail to fully humanize those we see as ‘other’. This frustrates and saddens me. It makes me want to find ways to decrease this building up of barriers, to emphasize the ways in which in person, real life, physical mobility is deeply important and valuable.
In many ways this should be feasible. While we are all extremely reliant on technology dominant narratives at the moment emphasize it’s negative effects, that reliance on technology does not replace actual human contact. So, that should mean that skipping that trip to a conference in person or re-locating to a foreign office or working out of a location with a better quality of life should not be written off simply because it could be done via video calls and other worksharing apps. This seems like a simple argument, one that most would agree with. Yet, there is still a constant cutting of opportunities for mobility, which are often substituted with virtual connection.
These thoughts do not lead to some conclusive hard hitting statement on what action needs to be taken to fix this situation. This is not one of those formulaic LinkedIn posts. I do not have concrete solutions. I do want to bring to the fore these contradictions in popular narratives. Because I do believe that an important part of change is to take notice of things and to discuss them. Discussions build narratives, which build the belief systems on which actions are built.