Gender inequality is a widespread problem in Papua New Guinea (PNG) including in formal health leadership. While reasons for women’s underrepresentation in health governance are manifold, structural causes including biased organisational gender norms are recognised as a major and persistent barrier to women’s participation. Traditionally, donor measures to promote gender equality have narrowly focused on effecting individual level change (largely through capacity building initiatives) whilst neglecting to address the relational and structural aspects of gender inequality. Needless to say, these measures have failed to bring about transformative and sustainable institutional change in this area.

As the focus on women’s leadership in health sharpens both in PNG and globally, it is becoming increasingly apparent that addressing structural barriers of inequality is essential for achieving gender equality. As such, there is a growing interest in gender transformative policies and programs that aim to transform discriminatory norms and unequal power structures which give rise to and reinforce inequities. However, there is limited understanding of how best to effect institutional change to advance gender equality in health governance. Thus, the primary aim of the proposed research is to develop an evidence-based theoretical framework to support gender transformative policy action to promote women’s participation in leadership and decision-making in PNG’s health sector. This will be done using a mixed-method approach including realist and Delphi survey techniques. In this presentation, the proposed study design and methodology will be discussed in greater detail as well as other relevant aspects of the thesis proposal.

About Sethunya

Sethunya Matenge is currently a PhD student in the Department of Health Services Research and Policy at the Australian National University’s Research School of Population Health. Her research focuses on donor gender equality policies for the promotion of women’s leadership and decision-making in the Pacific. She is particularly interested in the role of gender transformative programming in tackling structural causes of inequality to advance women’s representation and participation in Papua New Guinea’s health sector.

Prior to undertaking her PhD, she gained a Master of Public Health from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Medicine from The University of Newcastle (Australia). She has experience working in clinical medicine and public health in diverse contexts including Australia, Botswana and the Solomon Islands.