ABSTRACT
Gender/women and ethnicity/race are, in the late 20th/early 21st century, among the leading axes of marginality in contemporary Western liberal democratic societies; women and people of colour are more likely to experience economic disadvantage, social exclusion, lack of decision-making powers, misrepresentation in society, and, at its extreme, violence. Gender and ethnicity are also seen as occupying a shared intellectual and activist space; they are discursive ‘subject positions’ wherein claims for a radical reconceptualization of democracy have been made and from where legitimacy, rights and citizenship of the marginalized have been debated. This chapter talks about the author's claims regarding gender/women and ethnicity as marginal identities in New Zealand through an analysis of the processes of erasure and consolidation that have marked recent transitions. It argues that in contemporary New Zealand, there is a perception that women are no longer disadvantaged in the systems of social and economic redistribution.
