ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Samoan women, who find themselves in a smaller and ethnically and culturally more ‘homogeneous’ society than Fiji, have devised ways of working with, rather than against, the dominant cultural order, which they both reproduce and reconfigure in the process. It examines some of the barriers and the strategies women have deployed for negotiating and appropriating customary conventions and protocol – that is, the powerful institution of fa’asamoa – in inducing family and community support for their contested sporting pursuits. The chapter shows that women’s positioning in Samoan society is intricate and mediated by differing roles and status within the village social structure. Samoan women rugby players’ approaches to existing gender norms present an intriguing contrast with the highly oppositional nature of Fijian women’s rugby practices. The case of women’s rugby in Samoa demonstrates that cultural tradition is both enduring and dynamic; both reproduced and reconfigured.
