ABSTRACT
The islands of Oceania encompass four major ethnographic regions scattered across 65 million sq. miles of the Pacific and four-time zones. This chapter provides new ethnographic perspectives about gender relations in Oceanic societies and enhanced anthropological and Western understanding of indigenous women's lives. Significant issue associated with this far-flung island world concerns the history of anthropological and Western ideas about gender and the South Seas, the latter occupying a geographic and cultural space as well as representing a state of mind. Modern anthropology came of age with fieldwork conducted on the sexual lives of Pacific Islanders and the situating of indigenous women on the periphery of male-defined, societal concerns. Warlpiri men gain power from differential access to the institutions and ideologies of White Australian society, which privilege Aboriginal men and denigrate Aboriginal women as domestics and sex objects. Women farmers, including widows in contentious marriages who grow potatoes out of economic necessity, do not view themselves as entrepreneurial role models.
