ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the complexities of women’s agencies and activism in Fiji. Although the most isolated island communities are not immune to the impact of globalisation, women negotiate this within cultures where tradition, religion and the legacy of colonialism remain strong. However, historical, cultural and spatial specificities complicate an understanding of women’s agencies and alert us to the dilemma of treating the category ‘women’ either as unified or as infinitely fragmented. Theories that mediate between these extremes, such as seriality (Young 1995) and multiple identities (for example, Brunt 1989; Moghadam 1994; Chhachhi and Pittin 1996) are considered against the context of gender agencies in Fiji. This is discussed in four sections. The first section examines from both theoretical and empirical perspectives how agency is gendered, viz is women’s agency different from men’s?
