Papua New Guinea has more than 700 languages with complicated cultures and customs. Ambunti District, in East Sepik Province, alone has ten different languages. I come from a Kwoma-speaking area. This paper represents Papua New Guinean women from Ambunti District, in particular, but more generally from the vast, rural, remote areas, rather than the urban centres. I am president of the Ambunti District Council ofWomen (ADCOW), which was formed in 1993 and is affiliated with the East Sepik Council of Women (ESCOW). The Ambunti council ‘has been built from the bottom up. Leadership plus programme initiatives and directions have emerged from the rural villages’ (Nakikus et al. 1991: 145). My role is to coordinate and organise district executive meetings on a quarterly basis and to facilitate the implementation of awareness programmes within the respective area associations to which individual women belong.