This chapter examines the gendered impact of British protectionism in New Guinea and its consequences for indigenous women. This is done by identifying colonial spatial frameworks, and assessing how and why they evolved. In their endeavour to separate the civilised from the uncivilised, colonial officials instigated policies and laws which gave rise to segregated colonial spaces. The creation of segregated spaces mirrored the splits between the spaces of private and public, and of rural and urban, that existed within indigenous society.

Domestic spaces are where indigenous women remained, enclaved in the villages until the 1960s when Australia began to prepare Papua New Guinea for independence. The urban/rural split was partially influenced by the new division of labour, both paid and unpaid, and which was also gendered, and this arguably produced a feminisation of the domestic/village/private space.