ABSTRACT
In 2017, the Mongrel Mob Kingdom leader Sonny Fatu withdrew his chapters from the president’s table. In 2019, he publicly tabled the idea to patch their wāhine toa (female warriors), a move with arguably no precedent since the Hells Angels banned the wearing of patches by females in 1964 (Veno & Gannon, 2012). The Roadrunners, a now-defuncted Outlaw biker club from Palmerston North, come close but followed Hells Angels in the mid-1960s, banning female membership (Gilbert, 2013). There is anecdotal evidence that females could hold membership within such groups as the Black Power and Mongrel Mob during the early stages of their development, but there is no evidence of actual patch wearing. The response to the Kingdoms idea was swift and negative. This chapter explores this aspect of female involvement in the hypermasculine world of the outlaw bikers and patched street gangs in Aotearoa New Zealand to understand such resistance to woman wearing the patch.
