Papua New Guinea has just elected Rufina Peter, its first woman to parliament in over a decade.
In the Central Province, Peter will serve as governor after a hard-won campaign, becoming the eighth female MP ever to enter into office in PNG history and offering many a glimmer of hope for PNG women in a tough political landscape.
As a 52-year-old economist, Peter initially decided to run for office out of frustration at the continued deterioration of infrastructure, services and living conditions.
In 2017, Peter ran for office and surprised many by receiving the most votes of any female candidate in the country. She wouldn’t get elected until her 2022 campaign but her strong vote in previous years and the time she spent speaking to voters helped propel her success.
Peter worked full-time toward the 2022 election by travelling to villages across the province, handing out her CV and trying to persuade voters of the benefits in supporting a woman candidate.
“I had to challenge them about the perceptions of women, especially women in leadership,” says Peter.
“I would just use the analogy of a woman in a home, and what she does when she wakes up, how many jobs she gets done before she sleeps… And then I say, ‘pick a woman who is qualified to run for this office, and don’t you think she is going to do the same in this house, this parliament house?’ Of course she is.”
Not only did Peter have to convince voters of the capabilities of women, she also navigated the dangers that many women attempting to enter politics in PNG have to deal with– direct threats to her and her team’s safety.
A recent analysis by the Pacific Women’s Political Empowerment Research observed that in PNG, “the barriers that all women face when campaigning– namely violence, corruption and money politics– are still almost insurmountable.”
This makes it all the more impressive to witness Peter’s election victory and while some may ask why she would subject herself to such challenges, Peter says, “Because honestly, I would be equally responsible for the lack of development, and I could not live with that. You know, the least I can do is put my hand up.”
For the 2022 election, Peter had the backing of a strong 2017 vote and endorsements from men such as Chiefs from Tapini and other centres in her home district who decided to break with their male leadership traditions.
After four weeks of an election filled with violence, chaos, missing ballots, incomplete voter rolls and fraud allegations, Peter managed to get 62,361 votes– enough to unseat the sitting member, a high-profile businessman, Robert Agarobe, who came in second with 58,917 votes.
An onslaught of social media celebration and a general sense of relief followed Peter’s win with the knowledge that at least one of the 118 seats of PNG’s parliament would be held by a woman.
The goal moving forwards is to fill more of those seats with women but just one remains in contention for a seat in the next PNG parliament.
If only one or two women are elected–as appears to be the case– “they may be expected to shoulder the weight of four million-plus women of PNG,” says Dr. Orovu Sepoe, a political scientist and expert on women’s activism in PNG. “This is an injustice. This election was messy from day one, and has not done justice to many capable female candidates.”
Long before the election, Peter had overcome the many barriers that PNG women face in making their way towards leadership positions. As a young girl and one of eight children, she very nearly was asked to forego schooling in favour of helping her mother at home. It was her father who spoke out for Peter to attend school like her brothers, despite the high costs.
“I had to start working at a very young age to take care of my school fees, clothes, the basic necessities,” says Peter.
She went on to become an economist and enter into senior roles in agricultural and economic policy and banking before her entrance into politics.
Sepoe taught Peter as a student in the 1990s and says, “Rufina is intelligent. She stands for everything we call democracy and good governance.”
“Her win is a plus for PNG and all women after the disappointing drought following the 2017 election.”