SEX AND GENDER IN THE PACIFIC: Contemporary Perspectives on Sexuality, Gender and Health | Edited by Angela Kelly-Hanku, Peter Aggleton, and Anne Malcolm

In their introduction to this volume, the editors emphasize their commitment to prioritizing the voices, cultural understandings, and knowledge of Pacific peoples. The majority of the contributors are Pacific scholars and the issues that they discuss are of critical importance across the region. The collection comprises three thematic sections or fields. The first, “Young People, Culture and Education,” begins with a chapter by Jana Ali-Traill, a young Fijian feminist activist who advocates for gender equity and the development of positive sexual attitudes and experiences. She identifies the paradoxes within Fijian culture that contribute to strong familial bonds of love and care, but also perpetuate male-centred attitudes and patriarchy. Failures of inter-generational communication and strict moral codes on sexual matters generate shame, ignorance, and anxieties about premarital sex.

Several of the chapters deal with aspects of sex education, including the development of policies that are “sex-positive” and promote acceptance of gender diversity. Jioji Ravulo, writing about Pasifika youth in Australia, discusses the effect of missionization on Pasifika moral values surrounding sexuality and gender identity. He notes the fact that historically, in many Pacific communities, gender identities were fluid and “sexualized forms of behaviour” were celebrated in cultural activities such as dance. Conservative, evangelical missionaries condemned those aspects of Pacific culture that they perceived as erotic, or not conforming to the forms of gender distinction in their own cultures. Today, the majority of Pacific people identify as Christian and they adhere to the strict moral codes that equate premarital sex and homosexuality or transgendered behaviour with sin and shame. Debi Futter-Puati’s material on Cook Islands youth suggests that the task of changing attitudes and promoting open discussion of sex and gender diversity is fraught with difficulty.

The issue of shame runs through many of the chapters that deal with attitudes and moral responses to sex. Several studies challenge ideas that communitarian value systems are necessarily more inclusive or tolerant, especially where sex is concerned. A study of young men in highland Papua New Guinea, their experiences of sex and the pregnancy of partners, revealed that shyness and shame often inhibited them from seeking information or assistance from health workers. But the censorious reactions of family to premarital sex and unwanted pregnancies also reinforce silence and secrecy about sex. The centrality of familial and communal values ensures patterns of support and interdependence, but can also compel conformity to repressive sexual mores. Sometimes these are in tension—as in the ways families respond angrily to an unplanned pregnancy out of wedlock, but welcome the baby.

Over the past two decades, there have been interventions by a range of non-government organizations and government programs aimed at improving gender relations and sexual health, and reducing domestic violence. Most have adopted human rights frameworks. As the chapter by Emmanuel Peni and Tim Leach, “Localising Human Rights,” reveals, the appeal to individual rights sometimes presents insurmountable problems in Pacific settings. This chapter is written as a dialogue or talanoa, a free-flowing conversation, between Manu, a non-heterosexual Papua New Guinean and Leach, an Australian community-sector worker. Manu is critical of the human rights approaches of foreign non-government organizations. He notes the ways that labels generate distinctions and limit or constrain identity. It is not simply that foreign, “external” ideals are at odds with cultural values, Manu insists that often Melanesian understandings of sexuality are incommensurate, untranslatable, and therefore not accessible to outsiders. Leach offers examples of instances where the appeal to rights and the assertion of diverse identities create splits and antagonism.

Gender inequality and family violence underpin many of the health problems identified in this book. Manuel Rauchholz writes about the effects of Chuuk cultural ideologies that value hypermasculinity, especially as it is manifest in sexual conquests. The rates of sexual violence against women are extraordinarily high, but many victims do not even report it to anyone. Women who return to Chuuk after years of living in the US are acutely aware of the constraints on women’s behaviour and movement because of the risk of assault. The final essay, by Fiona Hukula, observes that in spite of government commitments to increased service provision for health and welfare and endorsement of policies aimed at improving women’s political roles, grassroots organizations depend on foreign aid. Moreover, “[g]ender-based violence is one of, if not the most important obstacle to not only reducing inequality between men and women but also building sustainable, resilient communities” (201).

Most of the contributors to this collection are social researchers and people who have practical experience in policy and programs on sexual and reproductive health in the Pacific. The analyses and solutions offered are informed by the theoretical frameworks of social work and health education. Perhaps because the editors aimed to produce texts that were “decolonizing” knowledge, there is relatively little acknowledgement of previous work on sexuality and reproductive health in the Pacific, especially that undertaken by anthropologists and historians. This does not detract from the relevance or importance of the studies documented, but it implies that the material presented is somehow novel or the findings completely different from those of previous researchers. In fact much of the material presented affirms the findings of historians, anthropologists, and health scientists who preceded their contemporary Pacific counterparts. This is both reassuring and depressing. Reassuring because the abundant literature on the enduring influence of Christian missionaries on sexual morality and repressive, patriarchal ideologies of gender relations is confirmed by the writers in this volume. Researchers including Margaret Jolly, Sally Engle-Merry, Richard Eves, and Anna-Karina Hermkens have also written extensively on many of the subjects covered. While their work is occasionally acknowledged, the consonance of their analyses with Pacific scholarship is not. Depressing because the gender problems identified decades ago continue to have deleterious effects on the lives of women and girls.                

Martha Macintyre

The University of Melbourne, Parkville