Vol. 12 No. 1 (2006): Contemporary gender issues

Cartoon: © Malcolm Evans
Editors: Janet Bedggood and Allison Oosterman

This "Contemporary gender issues" edition of Pacific Journalism Review features many leading journalists and researchers. This was the first of two editions distributed this year as part of  Journalism Education of Association of New Zealand (JEANZ) membership. The edition was jointly edited by Dr Janet Bedggood and Allison Oosterman. Editorial extract: "Sex is a fundamental division in all societies; all human behaviour has a biological base. The differences between men and women often involve inequalities, and this stratification is frequently seen as due to innate characteristics present in all societies. But what we do with our biological capacities is mainly a matter of learning. Anthropologists tell us that people learn their gender roles; knowing how to be a woman or a man in any society, is culturally learned. Historically, the diversity of traditional gender roles across the Pacific reveals many forms of gender difference. Women’s status varied in the region. The complexity of cultural behaviour and belief systems, the variability in the gender divisions of labour and sociopolitical systems show there were a range of determinants of female and male activities. Men and women were treated differently and behaved differently."