Marriage as the Model for a New Initiation Ritual

In the early 1960s, a grassroots woman's movement known as Kafaina sprang up in the Chuave area of the Simbu Province of Papua New Guinea (Warry 1986). ¹ Within ten years, it had spread to Goroka in the Eastern Highlands, where it became known as the wok-meri ( women's work/enterprise) movement. In the mid-1960s, the wok-meri movement reached the Daulo people who live on the eastern slopes of the Daulo Pass in the Asaro Mountain Range, Eastern Highlands Province. ² Here, it comprises today a network of small women's groups that save and invest money and engage one another in ceremonial exchanges. Elsewhere (Sexton 1986), I have interpreted the movement as a collective effort by women to bring about changes in their socioeconomic status and in the cultural definitions of gender roles. Through the politics of the movement, women endeavor to enhance their rights to control money earned through their labor in coffee production. Through its rituals, they conduct a symbolic discourse about changing gender roles, and they assume prestigious statuses, including that of ceremonial transactor (Strathern 1972), which previously were monopolized by men. ³