A Woman's Place
A Woman's Place

Author: Rachael F. Tatafu

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13:

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This thesis aims to provide a better understanding of the political positioning of women in Tonga today. In 1951 women were given the right to vote in the Kingdom of Tonga; however, it was not until 24 years later that a woman became a Member of Parliament. Since 1975 there have only been 9 women who have stood in parliament as a representative. To understand why women are under-represented in Tongan politics the thesis highlights the different roles and images Tongan women have in Tonga and how these impact on women’s participation in politics. Two significant perspectives are examined: the views of women who have participated in parliament and the views of women who have voted in the general elections. Both these perspectives are chosen because politics refers not only to direct participation in parliament but also to voter contribution. In exploring these two perspectives the thesis brings out and analyses the obstacles that women in Tonga face in their cultural context which are projected into the political arena thus reducing their participation in parliament. In examining the issue of voting, the thesis uncovers a distinction between ‘modernists’ and ‘traditionalists’, and attempts to characterise these two sides and their impacts on women’s participation in parliament. Since only a handful of women have stood in parliament since 2000, there is a concern whether issues and solutions regarding women are being discussed specifically by the government and in general. In conducting this research, I aim to introduce a new narrative for Tongan women, one that leads to their empowerment and hope for a better standing in society. This research is significant because it gives voice to the issue of the under-representation of women, analyses why this is happening and provides recommendations for ways forward.

Kinship to Kingship
Kinship to Kingship

Author: Christine Ward Gailey

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2013-12-06

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0292733917

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Have women always been subordinated? If not, why and how did women’s subordination develop? Kinship to Kingship was the first book to examine in detail how and why gender relations become skewed when classes and the state emerge in a society. Using a Marxist-feminist approach, Christine Ward Gailey analyzes women’s status in one society over three hundred years, from a period when kinship relations organized property, work, distribution, consumption, and reproduction to a class-based state society. Although this study focuses on one group of islands, Tonga, in the South Pacific, the author discusses processes that can be seen through the neocolonial world. This ethnohistorical study argues that evolution from a kin-based society to one organized along class lines necessarily entails the subordination of women. And the opposite is also held to be true: state and class formation cannot be understood without analyzing gender and the status of women. Of interest to students of anthropology, political science, sociology, and women’s studies, this work is a major contribution to social history.

Desire, Obligation, and Familial Love
Desire, Obligation, and Familial Love

Author: Makiko Nishitani

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2020-08-31

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0824883608

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Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork among Tongan migrant mothers and adult daughters in Australia, anthropologist Makiko Nishitani provides a unique account of how gifts, money, and information flow along the connections of kin and kin-like relationships. Desire, Obligation, and Familial Love challenges the conventional discourse on migration, which typically characterizes intergenerational changes from tradition to modernity, from relational to individual, and from obligation to autonomy and freedom. Rather, through an intimate examination of Tongan women’s everyday engagement with kinship relationships, Nishitani highlights how migrant women and their daughters born outside Tonga together create a field of relationships with kin and kin-like people, and navigate between individualistic, personal desires and familial duties and obligations. Their negotiations are not limited to a local frame of reference, but encompass vast distances, including relationships with relatives in places like Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and the “home” island nation. Tongan women manage these relationships across diverse modes of communication: face-to-face interactions in homes and at church, lengthy telephone conversations on fixed phone lines in kitchens, and interactions on social media accessed on living room computers shared between neighboring households. Relationships between migrant mothers and second-generation daughters are suffused with warmth and empathy, as well as tensions and misunderstandings. Nishitani’s work demonstrates the critical contemporary relevance of classical anthropological kinship studies and gift theories as tools that can help us to understand transnationalism in the “digital” age. Through reflections on feminist geography, social theory of technology, Bourdieu’s field theory, and media studies, Nishitani makes a convincing call for anthropologists to use relationships rather than geographical places as a site of anthropological fieldwork in order to understand the sociality of diasporic people. Filled with rich, intimate portrayals of diasporic women’s everyday lives and the everyday politics of familial relationships, Desire, Obligation, and Familial Love will appeal to students and scholars of the anthropology of migration, of communication technologies and social media, and of gender and familial relationships, as well as to those interested in fieldwork methodology, transnational and migration studies, and Pacific studies.

Women and Politics
Women and Politics

Author: Malliga Och

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2023-02-14

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1440871914

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Focusing on the distinct identities and diverse lived experiences of women in a wide range of countries and cultures, this book provides a comprehensive overview of women in local, regional, and national politics around the world. Woman and Politics takes on the historical challenges women have and continue to face, and the victories they have achieved, in political cultures and structures around the world. The introduction walks readers through the key issues, pressing concerns, and foremost questions that researchers confront in their studies of women in various political roles across the globe. The remainder of the book, divided into eight chapters, covers such topics as women's suffrage, the status of women in politics today, women as national leaders, barriers to women's political representation, and others. Leading experts and emerging scholars come together in this volume to ask and provide answers to the question of why gender parity is so important in politics. They answer that only women, who as a group have a distinct identity and lived experiences that differ from men's collective identities and interests, can accurately represent themselves both at home and on the world stage.

Queen Sālote of Tonga
Queen Sālote of Tonga

Author: Elizabeth Wood-Ellem

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13:

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This biography of Queen Salote of Tonga is also a political & social history of the kingdom of Tonga between 1900 & 1965. It looks at aspects of Tongan society, especially the role of rank, status & of the leading families & the Queen's skill in keeping the loyalty of her people.

Women, Politics, and Power
Women, Politics, and Power

Author: Pamela Paxton

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-03-17

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 1538137526

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Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective provides a clear, detailed introduction to women’s political participation and representation across a wide range of countries and regions. Through broad statistical overviews and detailed case-study accounts, the authors document both historical trends and the contemporary state of women’s political strength. Readers see the cultural, structural, political, and international influences on women’s access to political power, and the difference women make once in political office. The fourth edition includes the latest information available on women in politics around the world, including current events as they have unfolded across the globe. The newest thinking in the field is presented, including on violence against women in politics. Approach and Features Nine thematic chapters explain women’s access to office in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and why it matters. Six chapters cover women’s political power in specific geographic regions with recent research and events. The book’s intersectional perspective attends to the ways gender interacts with other forms of difference, both throughout the volume and in a dedicated chapter. A bounty of figures, maps, and tables provide visual accounts of the variations in women’s access to political power around the world, the growth in women’s political power over time, and persistent obstacles to gender equality in politics.