I get the feeling that they are populated by a form of woman politician that jostles with each other in power plays rather than truly being considered with the grassroots women of our country.

It depends on what each of those national womens groups advocate, their ojectives & beliefs. If they are national groups, then I suppose they have an aim of making interventions at that level. If they are national but have local/grassroot membership then, we can expect these groups to start their dealings with that level.

On the question of advancement of PNG women, it depends on how you define it. Let's take these cases, a group of women ages more than 40 from a remote part of EHP have undergone a literacy program for four years & on the fifth year, they graduate in a small ceremony & in forty years, they are able to read letters which have been written & sent to them by their educated children. You could have witnessed these women glowing on the day.
Then we have a group of village women from WHP or Enga or Simbu tabling their report to a national meeting on a Credit Program in Port Moresby. You could not believe how much these typical grassroot women could articulate at the national level.
One notable thing that happened as echoed by everyone is that, the Credit Project has enable these grassroots women to be financially independent or have the financial power, something which has been the male culture since time began.
To me, these cases though minimal are progress for our women & some of these national womens groups have been instrumental in these endeavours.
Cheers!

Thank you for this positive information.With my busy schedule, I rarely have time to read the newspaper let alone have the privilege of visiting here and appreciate news of this kind. I doubt this was in the paper was it?

Regardless, getting back to womens's groups I find it easy to undertand why some groups become almost political in their agenda versus being very grasroots oriented. From my personal observations it did seem the more outspoken the group the more attention was drawn to their status, cause and needs and the more grassroot group seemed to not receive as much. This is purely my observations. Perhaps being a little political has it's benefits... There are some towns that still lack the most basic of basic needs. The elected officials of that town missappropiated funds or what have you and now the townspeople have no budget to run on. Not a realistic one anyways. My point being, womens groups should carry some political clout, after all if politics is the only way to accomplish anything in PNG then so be it and for the most part almost all the areas womens groups try to cover is 95% more important that the 15% thought and effort our pollies in NCD put in a days work trying to run the country from waigani.

What's a bad example of a political women's group?

We the women of PNG need to do more. The men have been running things and have messed the whole thing up! I think the women of PNG may be the best hope our country has to survive. I mean that!

With the exception of the Government's focal point for women & the GAD units in line Depts, all other Womens groups are political groups in PNG.

The National Council of Women (NCW) is a political organisation & the umbrella organisation for all the women's groups in the country.

For too long we the educated women have aliented ourselves from these organisations & I really think it's high time we involve ourselves with these organisations. I mean if you look at the leadership of these organisations, they are women who hardly went above year 10. Through their own beliefs, aspirations, they are our leaders today and they do have wealth of experience when it comes to organisation, lobbying, walking through the rough terrains of PNG. I think they have perform to the best of their abilities. However, I fear that there may be limitation in terms of communication with those in power (executive govts) & other stakeholders (international org) let's not forget that we are moving towards globalisation. So I challenge all our educated women to make WOMENS ISSUES our business. Mind you it's the most rewarding job you can have, there's no pay (90% of the time) i'ts a 24 hour job and the reward comes when you can witness our grassroot mothers reaping the fruit of our labour.

Women's issues are uniting & you just don't care which ethnic women you assist cos we are all disadvantaged by a common factor.

Tru tru, but what is it going to take to affect change? Realistically, can one women make a change in a whole system? She would have to already be financially independent and a leader in her community right? If this is the case, it's not going to be easy. Women are so supportive of each other there really needs to be an effective communication tool that we can all use in a daily work to make the changes a reality. Does making changes in our communities rely on the almighty kina only? I have alot of ideas that I would like to see implemented at the village level which would cost next to nothing but the obstacles I see would be transportation( and I'm not talking company vehicle here), supplies one would need and the logistics of continuous communication , delegation and inspection of these projects. I know tht womens groupd do a great job but I'm talking about handing out the tools necessary to women to keep to use to implement theideas I have that I feel would be of major benefit to them.
P>S> I feel that I am one person that can make a difference but I need some direction. Can you help merrigong?
I'd appreciate your suggestions.

Yeap..I could where possible...if you tell me what you intend to deliver and through which delivery system...

Merrigong what do you think about this idea? I think that women at the village level where things are hard to come by already can perhaps benefit from an idea like this. After your question, I thought about it and decided that if I didwhat I iniatially wantd to then I would in effect be feeding a women one fish for a day instead of teaching them to fish for a life time. Too much for me to explain so I'll leave it at that but I thought about this idea instead. From the village level, if a group of village women selling goods at the market collectively put a percentage of their money away in a small trust account whereby nobody could withdraw any funds without a written approval from the other women and grew thast money for a period of time and purchased the tools necessaryto do business to support their family easier yet allow them still the freedom to live in the village and to really have the benefits of both worlds.

To join such a group so as the womens interest is genuine yiou have have to pay a membership fee, again to go into a trust account whereby nobody would be ble to withdraw these funds unless all agreed on by the members.

All it would take is two women to start. Two heads is always better than one. One can only learn from mistakes if one actually does it!Just a small suggestion that can grow and help women and their families. I understand nothing happens overnight but I also reallize the difficulty there is in doing things alone, and again, two contibutions is better than one. I need to think on this more.

gut nait!

Very good idea. I can see that in a long run this is economic empowerment for our women. Like every other project, there are problems associated with women's project implementation. I would like to draw your attention to the issues of Training and Sustanability in your planning. From observation, sustainability of projects/programs has been the greatest setback. Bulk of our women are illiterate, therefore any project/program must have a training component. By training, I mean the very basic training in management, bookkeeping, banking etc...If these issues are incorporated into your plan...go for it. If sustainability of your idea isn't convincing, it would be a good idea to implement your idea using the established womens network. Your idea is very similar to the established PNG Womens Credit Scheme which has it's seed funds deposited with all the District Womens Councils in PNG (I think it's 86 distrcits under the Organic Law on LLGs).This is a government sponsored project which targets very disadvanted families and the loan value ranges from K10 - K500.00. The Dept of Home Affairs oversees this project while implementation is done by the Women's groups. The management of the project is done by the Provincial Management Committee comprising of the women's groups reps, the council, DPI, Commerce etc. This is receiving good support from the community & politicians, like in the western Highlands, Oro, Enga etc.

Other Government sponsored projects include the SBDC project which gives loans to small businesswomen and the lastly the rural development Bank which targets well- to- do businesswomen.

Another similar project is the AusAid funded project "The liklik dinau Abitore" which is concentrated in the urban areas of Goroka.

I am sure women will identify with your idea & come to own it as research has found that credit project or schemes are needs of our women. They are also not new concepts as they have been around as loan societies in the late 60's & 70's.

Em tasol....

Thank you so much for your time and committment to others such as myself with the important information you provide. I know in our busy schedules that finding the time to respond and encourage others is a giving effort that uses our own time and energy and can be exhaustive so in that regard I thank you again.

I fully agree with you and can see that the major setbacks to ideas such as the one I mentioned earlier would be sustainability. Basically at the village level with the majority of women being illiterate, it would require someone with similar vision, commitment and most importantly encouragement to actually proceed through the day as an example to all others.

What we are talking about here is realistic ways of creating opportunities when if selling buai, or fish or vegetables is your only choice.
I'm trying to keep these ideas realistic from my own experiences. When I was in the village like the great majority of PNG women are today(despite the flocking numbers to cities), I had to generate my own income if I wanted store goods. This is not a simple task if you don't live on a plantation, have a relative with a government or private employment job collecting a paycheck and don't live in an area where you can easily grow basic veges such as kaukau,onions,aibica etc...

Needless to say, I baked goods to sell at the market. I used some of that income to buy food to feed my family and the rest went to buying the ingrediants I needed to bake my goods. Let me tell you, with what I had to do it wasnot easy and thousands of other women are still doing what I've done. This is a lifestyle. Paying K6 one way and another K6 to go back home after a visit to the general hospital in town is no small feat when your talking 5 and 10 toea goods making a couple of kina here and there. The point is with a sister. mother, neighbor or girlfriend or just a few women getting together and starting a small account, each one contributing mkes every thing more attainable and bearable.

These are realistic goals. I have been there but unfortunately I was to close to the scene to see the big picture. I know that all the women at the market were in the same situation as me and most probably wanted the same things as I. The problem was we did'nt think about helping each other. We were too busy trying to help ourselves without realising that if we had of really helped each other we would have most definately helped ourselves....

Communication is key. Encouragement is the bloodline of ideas and projects already in place to help women and getting involved is absolute paramount.

Again, thanks for the information.I'm wondering who you are but that's not importnt. What's important is the positive impact you've had on people like me.

God Bless sis.