Do no harm research examines women’s economic empowerment among Coffee smallholders in the Eastern Highlands Province
Richard Eves and SSGM PhD student, Asha Titus, spent five weeks in July/August in the Eastern Highlands Province (PNG) where they collaborated with CARE International to research women’s economic empowerment among smallholder coffee producers. This advances SSGM’s Gender, Health, Social Development and Migration cluster’s collaboration with the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) on women’s economic empowerment as part of the DFAT grant, Do No Harm: Understanding the Relationship Between Women’s Economic Empowerment and Violence Against Women in Melanesia. In April, in preparation for this work, Richard and Asha had trained a cohort of CARE International workers in research methods and assisted them to develop specific research instruments to study women’s economic empowerment and violence among these coffee small-holders. The research was done in three districts – Goroka and Unggai-Bena Districts, both near Goroka, and the more remote Okapa District. The research used mixed methods, including a quantitative survey of couples randomly selected from a small-holder cooperative partner in CARE’s Coffee Industry Support Project. The team completed 130 surveys, qualitative interviews with selected female and male coffee farmers , and key informant interviews with members of the community, such as village leaders, village court officials and women’s group leaders.
