Solomon Islands

Lily Poznanski

A woman is never independent from the time she is single and through marriage, and in some cases the woman does not own land or property or even home; nor does she have a say in the upbringing or children. The widows in the male-orientated societies very often in the past had to walk to their graves and be buried alive, particularly if their husbands were bigmen, and this shows the extreme attitude of men in our society, despite the powers possessed by our women in land dealings and the trusteeship of children. At least some more enlightened areas allowed the poor woman to go back home to her own people, which even today is not permitted in all our islands.