EDITORIAL: A legacy of gendered culture

Abstract

This edition of Pacific Journalism Review has a gender theme. 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.

Keywords

• gender
• editorials