[Home] [Databases] [WorldLII] [Search] [Copyright] [Privacy] [Disclaimers] [Help] [Feedback] Constitutional and Law Reform Commission of Papua New Guinea - Occasional Paper No 19

You are here:  PacLII >> Papua New Guinea >>Constitutional and Law Reform Commission

Constitutional and Law Reform Commission

LAW REFORM COMMISSION OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

IN

URBAN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

edited by

Susan Toft

OCCASIONAL PAPER NO. 19,

1986

Copyright 1985 by the Law Reform Commission of Papua New Guinea

Printed at the Government Printing Office, Papua New Guinea and published by the Law

Reform Commission of Papua New Guinea.

LAW REFORM COMMISSION OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Commissioners

Joseph Faupugu Aisa, Acting Chairman

Roy Tiden

Lepani Watson

Imnaculata Kereku

Robert Lak

Allan Marat

Secretary

Josepha N Kanawi

Research Staff

Sao Gabi

Susan Toff

Administrative Staff

Luke Nalo

Ari Heai

Theresa Imamaeva

Jack Uke-e

The Commission is situated in the 4 Mile Government Offices.

Postal Address: P0 Box 3439

BOROKO

Telephone: 258755

NOTE

This publication is one in a group to be produced by the Papua New Guinea Law Reform Commission during 1985 and 1986 on the topics of Marriage and/or Domestic Violence. The others are:

• Occasional Paper No. 18

MARRIAGE AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN RURAL PAPUA NEW GUINEA

results of a rural survey.

• Monograph No. 3

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

a collection of articles by professional anthropologists.

• Monograph No. 4

MARRIAGE IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

a companion to Occasional Paper No. 18 ethnographic information from the

survey villages.

• Report No. l4

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

summarising and concluding the recent research into domestic violence, with

recommendations.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks go to all the people who have contributed to the studies presented in this publication either through participation or administrative support.

The main urban survey, that of low income earners, was only possible because of the co-operation of the University of Papua New Guinea Geography Department, through Stephen Ranck, and the personnel departments of Burns Philip (Papua New Guinea) Ltd., Steamships Ltd., the Electricity Commission and the Defence Force. The survey of elites was done through the support of the Public Services Commission and those senior public servants who responded to the questionnaire.

Rosa Au conducted the urban settlement survey as part of her degree studies and her assistance was very much appreciated. Dr. Alec Ekeroma is thanked for kindly giving us permission to publish the results of his hospital survey. Thanks go to Vagi Raula who drew the graphs, and to Mathew Mobutuna of the National Mapping Bureau for the map. Ari Heai typed the manuscript of this publication, presenting the printer with camera-ready tables and text. She is commended and thanked for her outstanding work and for her patience and perseverance.

LAW REFORM COMMISSION

TERMS OF REFERENCE

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

I, TONY BAIS, M.P., Minister for Justice, by virtue of the power conferred on me by Section 9 of the Law Reform Commission Act, 1975, and all other powers me enabling, refer the following matter to the Law Reform Commission for enquiry and report –

Because -

1. domestic violence is contrary to the principles of our Constitution; and

2. the law does not enable the police and courts effectively t o protect women from domestic violence.

Enquire into and report to me on -

1. the nature and extent of domestic violence as a social problem; and

2. the legal remedies available for complaints of domestic violence; and

3. any changes to the law which may be necessary or desirable to achieve the protection of women from domestic violence; and

4. the steps which should be taken to bring the problem of domestic violence to the public notice.

In undertaking this reference you will –

1. consult with such bodies or people as you consider appropriate, including the National Council of Women; and

2. consider whether 'domestic assault' should be a specific offence in criminal law so that the police are obliged to prosecute even when the victim will not proceed with charges; and

3. examine the law of evidence and the defence of provocation with particular reference to domestic assault; and

4. consider any other relevant aspect of the topic as may be revealed during the enquiry.

When making your reports on the matters the subject of this reference you will attach drafts of any legislation required to give effect to any of the recommendations in those reports.

Dated this 18th day of August, 1982.

ANTHONY BAIS, M.P..

Minister for Justice.

---------------------------------------

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 7

CHAPTER ONE. 9

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN AN URBAN CONTEXT. 9

WITH RURAL COMPARISONS. 9

INTRODUCTION.. 9

Urban low income earner survey. 9

Urban elite survey. 11

Definitions and background. 13

SURVEY RESULTS. 16

Causes of problems in marriage. 16

The people to whom marriage problems are taken. 22

People most likely to help a beaten wife. 24

Measuring domestic violence. 25

Attitudes compared with practices. 27

Reasons for domestic violence. 29

The frequency of marital violence. 37

Objects used in domestic violence and serious injuries sustained. 37

Reporting domestic disputes to the police. 44

Changing attitudes towards domestic violence. 45

CONCLUSION.. 52

CHAPTER TWO.. 55

MARRIAGE AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. 55

IN TWO URBAN SETTLEMENTS. 55

INTRODUCTION.. 55

Choosing the Sample. 55

Methods of collecting data. 56

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RESPONDENTS. 56

Personal Details. 56

Employment Details (Table 2) 57

MARRIAGE PROBLEMS. 58

Divorce. 61

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. 63

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE. 73

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS. 74

CHAPTER THREE SPOUSE-BEATING: A HOSPITAL STUDY.. 76

INTRODUCTION.. 76

METHOD.. 77

RESULTS. 78

The extent of injuries. 79

The use of weapons. 80

Frequency of assaults. 80

Hospitalised patients. 82

Alcohol 82

Reasons for assault 83

Remedial action. 85

Assistance received by victims. 86

Problems other than violence in the relationship of victims. 88

Child abuse. 90

Social background of victims. 90

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PATIENTS. 91

CONCLUSION.. 94

CHAPTER FOUR.. 97

MARITAL VIOLENCE IN PORT MORESBY: 97

TWO URBAN CASE STUDIES. 97

INTRODUCTION.. 97

Rose and John's Story. 97

Margaret and David's Story. 101

Discussion. 107

INTRODUCTION

On 18 August 1982 the Papua New Guinea Minister for Justice, the Honourable A.L. Bais, MP, passed to the Law Reform Commission a Reference on Domestic Violence. The Reference was in response to a request from the National Council of Women (Appendix I). A resolution passed at their Fifth Convention 1981 stated that crimes against women, particularly domestic violence and rape, seemed to be increasing and that there were inadequate controls to protect women.

In formulating an approach towards this as a research topic it was decided that the nature and extent of domestic violence should be investigated through a series of studies. The initial study was rural. A survey was carried out at the end of 1982 and results are published in Law Reform Commission of Papua New Guinea Occasional Paper No. 18 and Monograph No. 4. This present paper deals with domestic violence in the modern urban environment of Papua New Guinea and includes five approaches to the topic: a survey of urban elites; a survey of urban low income earners; a survey of two urban settlements; a hospital survey; and two case studies of battered urban women.

The urban elite and urban low income earner surveys are analysed together, with comparative data from the previous rural survey, but otherwise the studies are presented independently. They all point to the fact that domestic violence is a phenomenon of married life for many Papua New Guinean couples. The conclusions to each chapter explain the general situation. The findings will be collated in Law Reform Commission of Papua New Guinea Report No. 14 which will serve as a synopsis for the research on domestic violence conducted by the Commission.

The articles in this present publication are innovative efforts to produce base-line data on domestic violence in Papua New Guinea and they reveal a high rate and tolerance of domestic violence. This could be a partial explanation for the present highly publicised problems of sexual harassment and rape of women.

If violence is occurring between the sexes within the family, then beyond the family even less respect to women may be shown. The rape of women from an enemy group or in a 'pay-back' conflict between men was traditional in many areas. Today, the violent mistreatment of women, much of it apparently exercised on strangers who are random victims, has brought strong public reaction and criticism. This concern prompted the following studies. Both the concern and the studies point to changes in Papua New Guinean attitudes towards marital violence. The country's decision makers need to be aware of these changed attitudes when they plan future development initiatives.

Only 12%¹ of Papua New Guinea's total population is urban, but it is urban dwellers who first publicly expressed concern about the occurrence of domestic violence, mainly wife-beating. The urban population is drawn from a rural pool of nearly three million people divided among over seven hundred linguistically discrete ethnic groups. Thus people with diverse cultural backgrounds come together in an urban environment which has developed almost entirely since the Second World War. People are drawn from rural to urban areas by many factors, important among which are employment opportunities, the availability of services such as health and education, the sophistication of the urban life-style and the presence of wantoks² to provide hospitality and support. Nearly all urban dwellers retain personal rights to the use of land in a rural location, but once having adapted to the town environment few people, especially the more educated ones, find village life congenial for more than brief visits. Coupled with that, in many rural areas, someone who returns permanently to the village is seen as a drop-out, a failure, and there is consequently great social pressure on the urbanite to struggle remorselessly on, not only to survive in the town, but to make a success of it there. Port Moresby, with a population, of over 124,000 is approximately twice the size of the next largest city, Lae. Its role as national capital contributes to making it both the major administrative and commercial centre and it is thus attractive to the aspiring rural person.

Notes

1. Estimates of population are based on the National Statistical Office (January 1982) Papua New Guinea 1980 National Census Pre-Release: Summary of Final Figures. Government Printer, Port Moresby.

2. Wantok is a pidgin word meaning ‘one language’, it is used to express the close relationship between people who share the same language and are therefore from the same cultural group. Sometimes used generally to mean ‘friend’.

CHAPTER ONE

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN AN URBAN CONTEXT

WITH RURAL COMPARISONS

by Stephen Ranck and Susan Toft

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this chapter is to measure the incidence, frequency and intensity of domestic violence amongst urban low income workers and urban elites. The primary data come from questionnaire surveys. The first survey covered low income earners in Port Moresby. It was carried out in 1984. The second survey, of urban elites, was done in 1985. The results of these two urban surveys are compared and contrasted with a similar survey, carried out in 1982 (Toft & Bonnell, 1985), covering rural sections of Papua New Guinea society.

The questionnaire survey technique was used for its speed and wide coverage. The internal consistency within samples, and the patterns revealed among the different samples, point to the basic validity of the technique in this context. In other words, it was the most appropriate data gathering tool given the aims, resources and time for this project. Questionnaires of this sort cannot probe too deeply and will not reveal all the underlying mechanisms triggering domestic violence. What they do very well is to set the minimum parameters for violence and bring the issues clearly into focus for any ameliorative initiatives which may follow or for any future in-depth research. Any bias will generally be in the direction of under-reporting. Therefore, the trends shown in this survey must be taken very seriously as they show the situation in its best light.

Urban low income earner survey

A survey of the low income segment of the urban population was organised in conjunction with the Geography Department at the University of Papua New Guinea. Thirty-six students enrolled in a course 'Cultural Geography' were trained in survey methods and techniques over a period of four weeks. They were then taken out to specific urban locations in Port Moresby with questionnaire papers which they used for formal interviews. Supervision of the students was tightly controlled. The work was an integral part of their course for which they received credits towards a Bachelor of Arts degree: this provided an incentive for the students to procure materials of good quality and ensured a high standard of performance.

As marriage and domestic violence are topics which concern people's personal lives, they could be sensitive to frank discussion in a survey. During the previous urban settlement and rural surveys, however, it was found that respondents were open, co-operative and interested. They appreciated that the family is at the core of their social life and were very willing to contribute to an enquiry seeking to identify problems which threaten marital and family stability. It was felt that a similar approach would work in the urban low income earner survey, but interviewers were cautioned to be sensitive and respect respondents' rights to privacy. Fortunately, respondents were generally co-operative, as observed and as opined by the student researchers in post survey de-briefing. Consistency between male and female results corroborates the quality of the data.

During the rural survey (Toft and Bonnell, 1985) students lived for a month in villages where they developed a working relationship within a homogenous community. This was not possible in the urban situation for various practical reasons including finance, accommodation and other demands on student time. It was felt that in face to face interviews with strangers, people would be most likely to be honest if interviewed in private, and certainly not in the presence of their spouse. As the majority of formal sector low income earners (mainly manual workers) in Port Moresby are men, it was decided to interview the men at their places of work and, also during normal working hours, to visit housing areas identified as low-cost (National Statistical Office 1982) where women could be expected to be at home attending to domestic responsibilities. In principle, female students were to interview women and male students to interview men. This was difficult in practice because, of the 36 students involved in the survey only nine were women, and their task of going around on a door to door survey was time consuming. Consequently, three male students who were mature and capable were selected to interview women employed in low income jobs at their places of work; they, with two women (one of the authors and a senior member of Steamships Personnel Department) interviewed 35.9% of the female respondents in this way.

The target population of low income earners had to be carefully identified. Small business enterprises which had been approached for assistance were unwilling to release employees individually for up to 30 minutes per interview. Two large companies, however, gave the study full support: Burns Philip (Papua New Guinea) Limited and Steamships Trading Company Limited. Without the help of their personnel departments and the managers of various subsidiary businesses the task would have been daunting and very difficult to monitor and control. As it was, easy access was provided to employees in bottling plants, a Laundry, steel works, supermarkets, hotels, a quarry, dock yards, a timber yard, garages, and wholesale storage yards. The total labouring work-force in each place was interviewed. In addition to Burns Philip and Steamships, assistance was given by the Electricity Commission, which made employees available for interview and gave authorization for a door to door survey of the Commission's housing complex, and the Defence Force gave permission for a door to door survey of houses occupied by families of lower ranks at Murray Barracks. Low cost housing areas in the suburb of Gerehu were visited door to door and all houses were covered in each housing area (Gerehu, the Electricity Commission and Murray Barracks)¹. Students were taken by bus to pre-arranged places, handed questionnaire papers which were collected when the bus returned to pick up the students, and supervisors did spot-checks during the sessions. Each student was expected to complete a minimum of twenty questionnaires, an average of five during each of four field sessions. Some students needed five sessions to complete their quota and some took an extra session to complete extra questionnaires. A total of 666 people were interviewed of whom 368 (55.3%) were men and 298 (44.7%) were women (Table 1). This is out of an estimated Papua New Guinean urban population in Port Moresby of 131,525, in September 1984². Presently, there are no data to indicate with any precision what proportion of the Port Moresby population would be within the formal low income sector. The respondents represent a wide diversity of residential areas (Table 2).

The previous rural survey served as a preparatory study both for this urban survey of formal sector low income earners and for the separate survey of urban elites. Appropriate questions in the rural questionnaire which related to marriage problems and domestic violence were extracted and used to compose urban questionnaires (Appendices 2 to 4), and on the basis of the rural results, coded answers were formulated. Thus, direct comparisons can be made between the results of the three surveys: rural, urban low income and urban elite. These are presented in this paper.

Urban elite survey

Accessibility to elite respondents was much more difficult than to the lower income groups and elite sensitivities were more pronounced. Responses in the urban elite section may consequently carry a wider margin of error than in either of the other two surveys. However, there is a consistency in the pattern of results which is obvious and which suggests reliability. Further, any bias should be that of under-reporting which means that the urban elite survey shows minimum figures for domestic violence rather than any exaggerations. This principle enhances the value of the survey.

The Public Services Commission of Papua New Guinea lent its support to this survey and directed that all ‘married’ (see definitions below) public servants of high rank, Clerk Class 10 and above, should receive a postal questionnaire.

TABLE 1: CHARACTERISTICS OF SAMPLES ACCORDING TO SEX,

ACE AND MARITAL STATUS AT TIME OF SURVEY

*The term ‘living together’, as opposed to ‘married’, was recorded as accurately as possible during the low income survey by interview, but it was clear from responses to the postal elite survey that some respondents had not differentiated between the terms ‘married’ and ‘living together’. In cases where both categories were marked, to indicate that the respondent was married living with a spouse, the ‘married’ category only was coded. But there may be respondents who marked ‘living together’ when they were in fact married.

Departments supplied lists of staff who fell into that category and officers were sent separate questionnaires for themselves and their spouse (see Appendices 5 and 6). This was organised in such a way that each person had an addressed envelope in which to seal and return the anonymous questionnaire through the Public Service internal mail system. Of 530 officers circulated (ie. 1060 questionnaires distributed), 277 papers were returned: 178 out of 530 from men, which is a 33.6% response rate, and 99 out of 530 from women, a response rate of 18.7%. Only a handful of senior public servants are women (the official figure was 27 at the time of survey) and most of the women who received questionnaires did so through their husbands (Table 1). It is not possible to know how many of the 178 male respondents in fact took home the questionnaires to their spouses, but it is clear from papers returned that many of the women were of a lower educational

standard than the husbands and had difficulty in completing the form; several questionnaires in excess of 99 were received but had to be discounted because respondents had clearly not understood all the questions, or had spoiled their paper in some way.

TABLE 2 : RESIDENTIAL AREAS OF LOW INCOME EARNER RESPONDENTS