Imagining Transnational Futures in Vanuatu

‘Two different worlds’: Papua New Guinean women working in development in Port Moresby

“…Citing some of the scholars whom she considers to have taken an intersectional approach to understanding life in the urban Pacific (including, for example, (Spark, ; Cummings, ; Anderson, ; Demian, ; Spark, ; Spark, ), Wardlow notes that ‘all of these scholars trace some of these gendered urban dynamics back to the colonial history of urban space in Pacific towns and cities – specifically, the history of urban space as white and male’ (Wardlow, ). This is true and there have been some attempts to account for colonialism, race, class and gender (see for example, Inglis, ; Johnson, ; Gewertz and Errington, ; Demian, ).…”

An Oceanic revolution? Stella and the construction of new femininities in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific

“…Joanne mentions her shorts as the embodiment of her difference and the reason she is harassed. Discussing matters of appearance, including ‘the trouble with trousers’ (2008), Maggie Cummings () writes about young Vanuatu women's contestation of the locally prescribed ways of ‘looking good’. Noting that ‘[t]he face of Vanuatu is that of the mama (mother)—the married, visibly Melanesian, church‐going, village‐dwelling mother who is respectful of both kastom and Christian (most often male) authority’, Cummings (: 33) examines what wearing trousers means for Ni‐Vanuatu girls and young women.…”

Transformations of Gender in Melanesia

“…This perspective reveals the decreasing significance of kin networks and the increasing influence of individualism and ideas of gender equity and personal fulfilment on attitudes to marriage. Adding to the developing body of knowledge about urban women in Melanesia (Cummings 2008(Cummings , 2013a(Cummings , 2013bMacintyre 2011;Rosi and Zimmer-Tamakoshi 1993;Zimmer-Tamakoshi 1993a, 1993b, 1998, in this chapter I illustrate how women's education and employment enables them to exercise new-found decision-making power with regard to their intimate relationships. I also show how their social connections with one another and ongoing support from their families of origin are allowing them new forms of urban belonging that unsettle both masculine domination of these spaces and traditional constructions of gender.…”