I am going to start referring to Papua New Guinea as “Mama New Guinea” in all my dealings with the country and its people and hope it catches on.
In part because I expect some reactions will amuse me, but mainly because the education and empowerment of women in Mama New Guinea could be the most effective route to better prosperity for the whole country and I want to create more opportunities to explain why.
Educating women and giving them access to family planning and freedom to make informed reproductive choices leads to lower infant mortality, more manageable population growth, healthier and better educated children, and greater economic output. This seems to have been shown in other parts of the world many times.
What seems to best enable this is ensuring opportunities are not restricted and every individual has the same basic freedoms.
The evidence on how those basic freedoms look for women in Mama New Guinea at the moment is troubling. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that women in Mama New Guinea have received, on average, around four years of schooling. It also estimates that more than two thirds have experienced intimate partner violence. These factors narrow the choices available to a woman long before she considers a career.
Sorcery related killings illustrate the gravest failures of protection. UNDP reports that violence associated with sorcery accusations mostly targets women.
Education offers a practical route toward greater independence. World Bank research associates women’s secondary education with higher earnings and identifies potential reductions in child mortality and malnutrition. Education can also help parents support their children’s schooling. These benefits make a difference to households struggling to meet the costs of food, healthcare and education, and to a country seeking lasting prosperity.
Bangladesh provides evidence of what deliberate investment can achieve. A 2021 study published by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) found that subsidies for girls’ secondary schooling improved education, delayed marriage, increased contraceptive use and reduced fertility. Boys’ schooling improved through benefits extending to siblings. Supporting girls helped widen opportunities across their households.
In Uganda, a randomised evaluation of adolescent clubs combining vocational training and life skills found that girls in participating communities were more likely to undertake income generating activities and less likely to have children after four years. Practical skills and information gave young women more options for their working and family lives.
Women should be able to decide whether to have children, when to have them and how many. With education, healthcare and reliable information, families are better placed to plan within their resources and support each child. The freedom to choose also protects the woman whose ambitions do not include motherhood.
If the USA can rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America as a projection of their power, why not change the names of other places for purely altruistic reasons? “Mama New Guinea” would give women’s education and empowerment a place in everyday national conversation. I wouldn’t even mind if Donald Trump claimed credit for it.
