ABSTRACT
Vanuatu, a Pacific Island nation, has one of the highest rates of gender-based domestic violence in the world. Much of the literature focuses on the 60%–69% of ni-Vanuatu women who experience physical, sexual, and emotional violence from spouses and partners. Yet, according to a 2011 report by the Vanuatu Women’s Centre on the well-being of women, the prevalence of non-partner violence is also one of the very highest in the world. Almost one in three women in Vanuatu was sexually abused before the age of 15, many by male family members. Tired of waiting for behaviour change and social justice, some young women in Port Vila are intentionally forming female-only households. What these friends all have in common is a history of physical and sexual abuse by fathers, brothers, uncles, and cousins, and the desire to end intergenerational transmission of violence onto their children. This chapter, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Port Vila, Vanuatu, looks at this emerging trend of women-only households and how some women are negotiating living conditions on their own terms.
