Gathering Wo/men in the Postcolonial Pacific Region

Abstract

Gathering Wo/men in the Postcolonial Pacific Region Kathleen McPhillips (bio) As I am writing this editorial in December 2006, thinking about how best to describe recent scholarship and local activism in the field of feminist studies in religion in the Pacific region, there has just been another military coup in Fiji, and island residents are preparing themselves for further violence and social chaos. The prime minister, installed six years ago by the Fijian military, has been forced to step down. While the situation surrounding this coup is historically, socially, and economically specific to Fiji, decolonization struggles have characterized the current political situation across the Pacific Ocean. The Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga have all been engaged in—often deadly and violent—economic and political power struggles, most intensely in the past six years. These four countries account for 92 percent of the region's population and almost 99 percent of its land mass. Such struggles take place against growing global economic agendas and in the shadow of Australia's enormous power in the Pacific region. The situation is tricky. Australia provides economic aid to these small nations and commands a good deal of political and economic clout. In Fiji, the police commissioner is Australian. And Australian military forces have been sent to a number of Pacific nations, including the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, to assist in dealing with the social chaos and violence that political instability fosters. While peacekeeping forces are essential, Pacific islanders often deeply resent their presence. Many perceive Australia as an oppressive big brother that has used its power to assert its own national interests over those of the nations it presumes to protect. For example, the Australian government recently decided to "process" at offshore facilities asylum seekers arriving in leaky boats from Indonesia, most of whom are fleeing oppressive regimes in Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq. Rather than allow the refugees to land on Australian soil, the government decided that it was better for them to be "processed" at centers located on [End Page 117] tiny islands in the northern Pacific such as Naru and Kiribati. These poor island nations have nowhere near the resources to deal with an influx of refugees that a modern, industrialized country like Australia does. However, island officials have had no option but to accept Australia's request to open their nations' doors to refugees in return for economic "incentives." Once on the islands, refugees often wait months, and sometimes years, to be processed, which can mean continuing on to Australia, traveling to another country willing to accept them, or sometimes returning to their country of origin. While they wait, they live in harsh, unfamiliar circumstances. What is the impact of these current regional political and economic conditions on women's access to economic, cultural, political, and religious resources? This question is especially important given the swing to conservative political and theological agendas in the region over the past ten years. In Australia, many of the women's reform movements that heralded institutional church change in the 1980s and 1990s have all but ceased, with diminishing congregational numbers and increasingly conservative agendas. Feminism has experienced a backlash, and women's position in mainstream Christianity seems barely to have improved. Small groups struggle to keep alive a voice for gender equity, but there is real concern that women's position in religious organizations and society more broadly is going backward. For example, a recent attempt to get the question of women's ordination onto a synod agenda in the Sydney Anglican Church failed. Women activists and scholars worry that the general society believes feminism has had its day—that women have gained equality and thus addressing gender issues is no longer important or necessary. The development of very conservative and fundamentalist attitudes among church leaders and politicians assists greatly the communication of this mistaken notion. In the Pacific, women have historically been very active in churches and various faith traditions. They have studied in Bible colleges and crossed the Pacific to participate in cultural and ethnic activities with women of other island nations.1 However, women of faith are concerned that the current political climate will make...