Autor: Prof. Paul Sillitoe, Sc.D., F.B.A.

A discussion of housing arrangements in the Was valley of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea opens up some intriguing questions about gender relations.  The construction of houses has further gender dimensions, which revolve around a sexual division of labour. The paper argues that Was valley attitudes to gender, as illustrated by such housing issues, challenge conventional views of male-female relations in the New Guinea Highlands, which are portrayed as unequal, even exploitative of women. It also argues that they challenge conventional views of the division of labour, both those coming from economics such as Adam Smith and Karl Marx and those originating in sociology with Émile Durkheim and Herbert Spencer. The esteem accorded to individual liberty and equality, which I think are central values in Wola social life, informs this investigation of sexual division of labour arrangements. It brings out the paradoxes evident in stateless political-economic orders, and invites interpretation of their transactional accommodation.

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