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WOMEN AND WORK IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC
Jacqueline Leckie
Although women and development is a common theme in third world studies, the actual quantitiy of published material on women in the Pacific is still minimal (for bibliography see, Simmons
and Yee (eds),1982, Slatter and Moran 1984). Original research can be found in various papers and reports but it is generally scattered, lacks synthesis and is tucked away in the officers of governmental and
international planning bodies. Most visibly, womens studies have not left a significant mark on the established Pacific journals and there are few substantive publication on the Pacific (for an exeception see O
Brien and Tiffany (eds), 1984). This omission is even more glaring when the field of womens labour studies in the Pacific is surveyed. To date there is no general publication on women and work in the Pacific.
GENDER, CLASS AND RACE DYNAMICS: INDIAN WOMEN IN SUGAR PRODUCTION IN FIJI
Shaista Shameem
The involvement of India indentured labourers in sugar production in Fiji has received the attention of a large number of social workers, historians and sociologists.
Significant documentaries have been provided both by writers of rewrite the history of Indians in Fiji. The studies of both sets of writers, although extremely valuable, have
been to date limited to a presentation of plantation violence, caste origins of the labourers, small-farming structure identity crisis and political struggle, religion and the
functions of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company. The latter was the largest single employer of indentured labour in Fiji.
DOMESTIC SERVICE IN SUVA, FIJI: SOCIAL AND OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY OF FIJIAN HOUSEGIRLS
Caryl Pollard
Because of low educational limited levels and a lack of marketable skills, domestic servants have generally experienced limited upward social mobility (de Souza 1980,
Tellis-Nayak 1983). Before migrating to urban areas in search of employment most domestic servants had been raised in rural or agricultural settings and therefore
displayed an air of naivety towards urban life (Nett 1966, Smith 1975, de Soyza 1980). Domestic service has at least been instrumental in providing such rural migrants
, especially live-in females, with a means of geographical mobility by which to effect a gradual transition from rural to urban life.
WOMEN FACTORY WORKERS IN FIJI:
THE "HALF A LOAF" SYNDROME
Claire Slatter
The condition of women in factory employment in Fiji captured national attention during the 1986 controversy over the garment industry, which then employed more
than 2000 non-unionised women under unregulated conditions and at wages as low as 25 cents an hour. Described by the last Alliance government Minister for Economic
Development and Tourism, Peter Stinson, as "one of Fijis greatest hopes for development in the medium term", garment manufacturing has become a major export
industry in the last six yearsr. Under the terms of SPARTECA, Fiji is able to export a qouta of finished garments to Australia.
MARRIAGE: CHOICE OR DESTINY?
THE CASE OF INDO-FIJIAN WOMEN IN SUVA
Shireen Lateef
This paper forms part of a wider study for a thesis dealing with the subordination of Indian women in Suva, Fiji. In this paper the inevitability of marriage for Indo-Fijian
women is located in the particular economic and ideological conditions of existence. The paper also explores the extent to which any change in these conditions leads to a
transformation of the institutional arrangement. I argue that women's absence from and or marginal position in the economic sphere, together with the prevailing gender
ideology, makes marriage inevitable for Indo-Fijian women, thus ensuring their continued subordination. These conditions of existence ensure firstly, that marriage remain predominant.
ASSESSING THE QUALITY OF LIFE FOR WOMEN AND MEN IN FIJI USING ACTIVE LIFE PROFILE ANALYSIS
John Cameron
Much of the discussion about the development has been conducted in terms of monetary incomes with ‘higher income per capita’ being equated with ‘more
development’. But there have been periodic efforts to supplement, if not replace, monetary income measures with a non-monetary index of development. These
attempts have failed because the indicators used often appeared or arbitrary. Active life profiles are non-monetary indicators of overall development which aim to meet
both these criticisms. It would be mistaken to see them as replacing monetary income measures but they may have a role in complementing such measures, giving a different
perspective for evaluating past change and prescribing policies to remove imbalances. Active life profiles aim to show patterning of states of economically active life for a
specified group of people at a point in time. The states of life considered in this paper are those generally collected in national censuses under the three headings of
education, forms of economic activity, and a broad definition of economic of economic inactivity excluding those in formal education. In most national census, every
person over the age of five is put in one, and only one, of these categories. Thus most problems of unsystematic and local indicators are removed although subjective
classification by respondents and enumerators remains a problems. But this is arguably no more of a problem than recall of self-consumed harvested crops or casual wage
income which would be needed to estimate money equivqlent income.
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