Wayward Women: Sexuality and Agency in a New Guinea Society

by Holly Wardlow

Written with uncommon grace and clarity, this extremely engaging ethnography analyzes female agency, gendered violence, and transactional sex in contemporary Papua New Guinea. Focusing on Huli “passenger women,” (women who accept money for sex) Wayward Women explores the socio-economic factors that push women into the practice of transactional sex, and asks how these transactions might be an expression of resistance, or even revenge. Challenging conventional understandings of “prostitution” and “sex work,” Holly Wardlow contextualizes the actions and intentions of passenger women in a rich analysis of kinship, bridewealth, marriage, and exchange, revealing the ways in which these robust social institutions are transformed by an encompassing capitalist economy. Many passenger women assert that they have been treated “olsem maket” (like market goods) by their husbands and natal kin, and they respond by fleeing home and defiantly appropriating their sexuality for their own purposes. Experiences of rape, violence, and the failure of kin to redress such wrongs figure prominently in their own stories about becoming “wayward.” Drawing on village court cases, hospital records, and women’s own raw, caustic , and darkly funny narratives, Wayward Women provides a riveting portrait of the way modernity engages with gender to produce new and contested subjectivities.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Gender, Read For School, Sexuality

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Serena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this read even though I read it for a university research essay about women and education in Papua New Guinea. This book explains the cultural ideas surrounding gender in rural communities within the nation and how individual sexuality is defiant and an act of agency.

Honestly an interesting and eye opening read. Would recommend :)

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is as described on the back of the book; an extremely engaging ethnography. Highly recommend for anyone interested in gender, cultural studies or economics. The author’s treatment of her subjects is exemplary. While the style is academic the writing is engaging and accessible to the lay reader.

[Loukia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read numerous ethnographies and this is one I would read again. It was incredibly interesting and easy to follow and really allows insight into personhood and agency.

[Len · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm tremendously impressed with Wardlow's work. She manages to hold in tension the many paradoxes and complexities of modernity, sexuality, gender and globalization at play in the Southern Highlands, all the while writing an account that is incredibly humanizing as well as profoundly insightful. This is what good ethnography looks like, and as a student who reads a lot of these, the fact that the book is well written as well does not go unappreciated.

[Sonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Wardlow's work. It was well-written and articulate. She provides excellent and intriguing examples of negative agency among Huli women and demonstrates the ways in which structure and practice are mutually constitutive.