Collective Afterword: Listening, re-storying, reanimating research and action

Ramona Vijeyarasa, Sonia Palmieri, Margaret Jolly and Tanya Jakimow

This afterword traverses our collective thoughts as we have reflected on what we have learned from this process of bringing together scholars and scholarship from across Asia and Oceania. Our lessons are substantive and methodological and, in most cases, both, as we have come to appreciate how methodological predispositions shape which and whose stories are told and, in turn, whose are not. We attempt here to identify synergies across the chapters in ways that can help move us forward.

The language of difference: Epistemic violence and injustice

The chapters in this volume attest to the emergence of profound questions of epistemic justice. The dominance of researchers from certain countries and English as the privileged language of publication is palpable. Moreover, in acknowledging our positionality in a very unequal world, further questions stem from the language we use to describe our differences and how those differences have sedimented in the longue durée of Euro-American colonialism and its aftermath. Several chapters critique dominant modes of classification and categorisation, posing ethical questions about the epistemic violence in such choice of language.

In 1952 amid the Cold War, the French geographer Alfred Saury coined ‘the Third World’ to describe those countries, many of which were erstwhile colonies, that were not in the camps of the rival powers of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc or the United States of America and its Western allies. Although embraced by many individuals in ‘non-aligned countries’, its bipolar, geopolitical foundations and then the collapse of the Soviet Union meant this term was contested and ultimately obsolete. Alongside this ternary partition, in the period after World War II, we saw a proliferation in binary labels, ‘developing’ and ‘developed’, as poles of a projected continuum. In English the usage of the word ‘development’ exponentially rose after World War II alongside the establishment of institutions following the Bretton Woods Conference, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, to regulate international commercial and financial relations. This notion of development was widely criticised for envisaging linear progress on a Western model, for privileging economic indicators and for failing to see how the relations between the developing and developed worlds were predicated on the inequalities created by a colonising and globalising capitalism (for example, Escobar 1995).

Despite such trenchant critiques, the language of development survives in many national policies and programs and notably in the language of the United Nations, as in the Sustainable Development Goals. Still, the language of Global North/Global South surged from the 1970s and 1980s. Coined by American writer and activist Carl Oglesby in connection to the Vietnam War, ‘Global South’ was used to depict those countries with dense populations, low cash income, poor infrastructure and little industrialisation. In critical development studies, Global North/South refer to nations and communities of relative wealth and deprivation, accounting for pockets of extreme wealth in ‘developing countries’ and of poverty in ‘developed countries’, with explicit attention to the relations between them (Dirlik 1997). These categories have nonetheless, in wider usage, become synonymous with developing/developed, used as a descriptor for countries rather than as a basis for transnational solidarity (Mohanty 2002). The use of geographic hemispheres to depict these relations was not only confusing (since many countries of the Global South were in the Northern Hemisphere and vice versa), but also threatened to naturalise geopolitical relations that were far more fluid and contested (see Jolly 2008). The dichotomy tended to homogenise diverse countries and, despite the attempt to neutralise disparaging language, it sustained pejorative values in ways akin to developing/developed.

More recent language avowed by many of the authors in this volume is that of the majority/minority worlds. Coined by Bangladeshi photographer and journalist Shahidul Alam in the 1990s (see Alam 2008),¹ the terminology of majority/minority worlds aspires to reframe from the perspective of the majority—that is, the overwhelming demographic majority of people on Earth. Alam asserted that previous framings including Third World and developing/developed stigmatised the majority through a capitalist, material lens as ‘icons of poverty’. This resonates with compelling critiques of how this negative lens was further darkened for women of the ‘Third World’. They were too often seen as victims of poverty, of male domination and gender violence in a way that denied their individual and collective agency, their political engagement and efficacy (see Mohanty 1988, 2002; Pailey 2020; Spivak 1988). While terminology may vary, our collective ambition has been to challenge a singular and hegemonic approach to acknowledge these abovementioned tensions.

Positionality and privilege: Seeking justice

As foregrounded in Chapter 1 of our volume, mainstream theorising about gender and politics has come predominantly from ‘white’, minority-world women. We do not suggest this scholarly project was inessential or uncomplicated; indeed, the sustained struggle to present a cogent critique of male dominance in political institutions has ultimately made a significant contribution to women’s gradually increasing political participation, especially in the minority world. In some ways, it appears we four co-editors embody that tradition: we are all women from the minority world, employed by Australian universities.

Yet, we are also not the same: our individual and collective scholarship is informed by vastly different experiences—theoretical and practical—as well as diverse cultural backgrounds. Ramona and Sonia grew up in ‘ethnic communities’ in Australia, respectively, from Sri Lankan-Malaysian and Italian ancestry, grappling with what it meant to be different and the same in an evolving, albeit not always progressive, acceptance of Australian multiculturalism. Although her Ukrainian father was subject to exclusion as a young migrant in Australia, Tanya was afforded social invisibility through her ‘whiteness’. Margaret has Scottish and north English ancestry; she grew up in a working-class family and benefited from the brief era of free tertiary education in Australia in the 1970s. While Margaret and Tanya have deep disciplinary roots in anthropology, Ramona and Sonia are grounded in the terrain of law and political science. All of us have been involved in feminist activism as well as scholarship, variously in street protests, in collective movements in Australia and overseas, in international organisations, in government work and in challenging perduring patriarchal practices in curricula, scholarly assessments and organisational culture in the universities in which we work.

It is not surprising, then, that we deliberately sought new entry points from which to elucidate our understanding of gender and politics in Oceania and Asia. Indeed, the heart of this edited volume lies in its diversity. Together, our contributors bring new voices, new questions and, we suggest, a new justice to this field of study.

Our volume includes the voices of emerging authors, queer authors, authors from both Oceania and Asia, authors with a disability, legal scholars, anthropologists, political economists, journalists, public servants, development specialists and practitioners, political scientists and early, mid and late(r) career scholars. From these varied positionalities, our authors asked new and fascinating questions. How can the disciplines of anthropology, history, development studies, political economy and media studies inform our understanding of gender, culture and politics? How can the study of gender and politics itself be broadened to include those who participate in alternative ways? How can the experience of people in Oceania and Asia, including their colonial and decolonial experiences, speak back to minority-world theories and concepts? How can local and domestic spaces be leveraged as political spaces in majority-world settings? How can non–state-affiliated feminist movements be sustained, even in states that are increasingly or totally authoritarian? How can we capture, in culturally respectful ways, the lived experience of those women who engage in formal politics in the majority world? How can the theoretical contributions of scholars from Oceania and Asia on gender and politics be better cited and celebrated? These questions point to an obvious injustice in the narrower focus of political scientists in particular, but also of minority-world scholarship in general.

Linguistic injustice: Challenging Anglophonic bias

That language is loaded is self-evident in the discussions captured in the pages of this book. In many respects, the entire collection is a response to Tanya Jakimow’s call (in Chapter 1) to ‘inquire into how this [linguistic] imbalance impacts the field of gender and politics’. We have sought to bring visibility to the language bias that in some disciplines is acknowledged as ‘underexplored’ topics (Ammann 2022: 811) and which, while well recognised by feminist scholars, continues to persist across disciplines.

International legal scholar Odile Ammann defines language bias as not just being about the inclination or prejudice towards one language but also an association with that language as good, strong and trustworthy and therefore others as weak and of less value (Ammann 2022: 823). An English ‘imperialism’ in teaching and research, Ammann argues (2022: 823), has contributed to a type of linguistic injustice. We see such injustices play out in the scholarship about gender in politics across both Oceania and Asia. The struggles of marginalised groups to be represented and accepted in political spaces—many of them hard won—are paralleled by the struggle to be accounted for in scholarly writing.

We are reminded of the consequences of such linguistic bias, as Jaemin Shim (Chapter 2) demonstrates the extent to which the increasing spaces carved out for ‘gendered’ scholarship have not been matched by a representation of scholarship from all regions and languages of the world. A bias towards the minority world permeates. Authors from particular countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia—dominate scholarly debates, amplifying a narrowness concerning who is cited and about which countries. This is a critique we rightly direct at ourselves as authors from Anglophone Australia, as dedicated as we have been individually to studying countries in Asia and Oceania in as grounded ways as possible, using local languages where we can. Batalibasi et al. (Chapter 7) show how using local languages creates a sense of comfort for interlocutors but also attunes researchers to the need to listen carefully and to hear nuances and cultural silences. Given the hegemonic nature of these Anglophonic experiences and standpoints, what are authors whose first language is not English left to do? Either bear the financial cost of communicating in one’s first language and translating into English or embrace the challenge of writing in English, even though certain pivotal concepts or cultural nuances may not adequately translate.

If we fail to challenge the boundaries and demarcations that language can create, we lose the potential to share knowledge as a result. We can acknowledge that ‘[p]eople, materials, and ideas move more easily within linguistic communities than between such communities’ (Roberts 2017: 3). Yet, when debates that may be vibrant and robust in one set of nations speaking the same language are not making their way across borders to others, there is a notable loss for knowledge generation (Vijeyarasa 2024). Anna Kwai (Chapter 3) has reminded us of what is lost in translation—or, in this case, overwhelmed by the dominance of cultural precepts, frameworks and gatekeeping of the minority world, deliberate or otherwise. A monolithic approach to language—in which English dominates—can lead to a monolithic approach to culture, Kwai warns for Solomon Islands. Cultural experiences are incorrectly narrated by minority-world ‘experts’ and development agencies and certain women’s stories may be erased altogether from oral, written and photographic histories. Selected languages and, in turn, perspectives bury others in telling an allegedly ‘bigger’ and more comprehensive story about women and development in Solomon Islands.

Challenging English as the lingua franca of gender and politics research raises a further problem. English-language concepts, developed elsewhere, may not have localised meaning. Mema Motusaga and Elise Howard (Chapter 9), in their project of re-storying through a Pacific narrative women’s experiences of politics in Samoa, require us to revisit and arguably challenge a framing of women’s rights and gender equality as Western outsider ontologies that have little to offer. Margaret Jolly’s work on Vanuatu (Jolly 2000: 134) and the ‘powerful allure’ of the ‘language of human rights’ for educated, elite ni-Vanuatu women is suggestive. She proposed that this might eschew the individualist character of some dominant Western models of the person. A broader traction for such language might entail articulating with Indigenous ideas of the human person in kastom (tradition, ways of the place) and the collective Christian projects of women’s groups, which aim at improving women’s lives. Perhaps, then, a middle path can be plotted to embrace both ‘tradition’ and human rights (see Biersack et al. 2016; Leach 2021; and below on vernacularisation).

How do we alter such practices to move forward? Language bias is not easy to overcome; moreover, it is something that all English-language scholars perpetuate and amplify (Ammann 2022: 823), to a degree. We may want to forgive a reluctance among minority-world scholars to give due attention to Asia and Oceania, since combining feminist scholarship and political action might seem easier if one is a citizen. Moreover, to truly compare across borders requires scholars and activists to contextualise, to seek local meanings and to interpret sociocultural practices, policies and laws—both formal and informal—that may be specific to a culture (Rosenblum 2006: 778). Such depth of critical engagement often requires a fluency in language alongside a deeper cultural knowledge than may be available to an outsider (Vijeyarasa 2024). Yet, we cannot ignore the degree to which language bias is felt both across countries and regions and within nations. The Philippines, for instance, is a nation with 175 individual languages. While Tagalog-based Filipino is the national language according to the 1987 Constitution, it has made few inroads into the Filipino legal system (Pefianco Martin 2012: 1). In the Western Pacific, linguistic diversity is extreme: Papua New Guinea has 834 Indigenous languages, Vanuatu has 134 and there are 73 in Solomon Islands. In all these countries pidgins are widely used as a lingua franca and, in some, are recognised as national languages. Nonetheless, the educated elites and the political classes are fluent in English and in Vanuatu English and/or French.

Is the trap, then, to tread around rather than plunge head-on into the complex terrain of language, culture and rights? Serena Ford (Chapter 14) speaks to a Japanese Government intervention that is depicted as a ‘training program’ and yet is highly depleting of women’s energy, time, resources and skills. Ford describes what in the eyes of many is the exploitation of the rights of migrant workers from Vietnam. Yet, what we consider a euphemism may better reflect the discomfort or lack of universalism or resonance of the language of human rights. Ruby Lai (Chapter 12) reminds us that a further challenge lies with the coopting of human rights language. In Hong Kong, the language of ‘gender equality’ has been deemed socially acceptable and feminist activists are even forced to ‘professionalise’ their feminist claims through the nature of their research or public engagements to strengthen feminist bargaining power.

At the same time, these chapters illustrate that language can be transformed and new meanings given. Both Asia and Oceania call on us to give new meaning to terms whose definitions seem entrenched. ‘Housewives’ can become presidents in Indonesia and the Philippines (Vijeyarasa, Chapter 8). Meanwhile, the matrilineal cultures of the South Tetun–speaking communities of West Timor transcend the very concept of ‘housewife’ as female ‘housemasters’ hold authority and influence (Bayo, Chapter 10; and below).

We ultimately seek scholarship—on singular countries and comparative ones—that is rigorous, nuanced and both global and localised. This is an overwhelming ask for many scholars. That subaltern scholarship from Asia (by Mohanty 1988, 2002; Spivak 1988; and others) appears throughout the chapters in this book reflects the extent to which we have sought to revisit, revalue and re-centre non-Western forms of knowing that are upheld by such linguistic bias.

Masculinist states, gendered binaries and vernacularisation

An aim of this volume has been to identify theoretical lenses that can illuminate the common processes in which masculinist states become dominant. As outlined in Chapter 1, a key concept in the anthropology of democracy—the vernacularisation of democracy (Tanabe 2007; Michelutti 2007)—can be repurposed for both analytical and transformative ambitions. Common models and institutions of liberal representative democracy have spread globally, yet the forms they take are anything but uniform. Rather, ‘the moment democracy enters a particular historical and sociocultural setting, it becomes vernacularized; producing new social relations and values, which in turn become the raw material for new relations, political rhetoric and political cultures’ (Michelutti 2010: 67). Local idioms, folk values and practices come to influence how people perceive the political world; in turn, the political world transforms social and cultural practice. It is through the comparative method of revealing convergences and divergences in processes of vernacularisation that we can help to explain, in the hopes of redressing, male political dominance.²

The chapters in this volume tell stories of historical forces and cultural continuations that have profoundly shaped contemporary democracies. The impact of colonialism on the marginalisation of women in politics today is increasingly recognised (for example, Celis et al. 2013; Hawkesworth 2012) and is a central theme in chapters by Anna Kwai (Chapter 3), Salmah Eva-Lina Lawrence (Chapter 5), Margaret Jolly (Chapter 6), Mema Motusaga and Elise Howard (Chapter 9) and Longgina Novadona Bayo (Chapter 10). These authors also point to how colonialism extended far beyond the institutions of formal politics. Missionisation and Christian conversion pervasively transformed gender relations with political consequences across Oceania and in several parts of South and South-East Asia. During processes of decolonisation, new states drew on colonial models of governance that favoured men’s political leadership and devalued ‘women’s relevance in political affairs’ (Jolly, Chapter 6). Postcolonial state and nation-building have also introduced novel gender ideologies that are often framed as being ‘traditional’, as seen during Suharto’s New Order regime in Indonesia (Bayo, Chapter 10). Hong Kong’s complex colonial and postcolonial histories (Lai, Chapter 12) have led to a point where women’s movements struggle with subtle ideological dissonances, particularly between elite and grassroots activists.³

Centring Asia and Oceania has revealed the significance of these forces, not as experiences unique to these regions, but as often converging with other national and regional histories (Vijeyarasa, Chapter 8). Moreover, despite the myriad possibilities that could arise from the assemblage of cultural norms, ideologies and practices, vernacular democracies seemingly everywhere have produced, or produced anew, male political dominance. At critical junctures, vernacular democracies have been scripted by, and to the advantage of, men.⁴

These vernacular democracies share a common feature, albeit with local particularised characteristics. Binaries of male/female and public/domestic that relegate women to their ‘natural’ position within the domestic sphere have enabled men’s near monopolisation of formal politics (Segato 2018; Vogel 2013). Feminists have problematised the separation of and opposition between public and private as, for example, not capturing the politics that occurs within the home or other forms of informal, localised and collective politics-making (Diprose et al., Chapter 13). The binary nonetheless remains an analytically productive and consequential distinction ‘linking the cultural valuations given to the category “woman” to the organization of women’s activities in society’ (Moore 1988: 23). For example, across Oceania, precolonial gender roles, in which reproductive and productive roles were valued equally and not separated, were disrupted by ‘novel gendered binaries between domestic and public life’ (Jolly, Chapter 6). The ‘cult of domesticity’ established the domestic sphere as the basis for women’s contributions in Solomon Islands, resulting in a devaluing of women (Kwai, Chapter 3). The public/domestic distinction introduced during colonial times in Papua New Guinea by white male officials, excluding women from colonial enclaves, plantations and mines, continued through decolonisation. As Anne Dickson-Waiko avers, men were allowed to enter states as citizens and individual agents, while women were instead cast as ‘relational beings’, their relational labour devalued and afforded a lower status (Lawrence, Chapter 5; Jolly, Chapter 6). While these experiences are from Oceania, they are shared with other regions. Rita Segato (2018), an Argentinian feminist, scholar and activist, argues this binarism is a feature of colonial modernity more generally. As the ‘public’ became a totalising space in which all else was separated into the ‘private’, the masculine was made primary and the feminine secondary. The long-term consequences for women’s position in politics in postcolonial democracies have been profound.⁵

Comparison can reveal the mechanisms introducing, solidifying and producing anew these novel binaries into durable political arrangements. Reading across chapters, four mechanisms are evident. First, is the lack of recognition of women’s sources of power, and a separation of the domains in which women’s power lies from the secular-formal-political. Missionaries lacked understanding of women’s power in Samoan feagaiga (complementary brother–sister) relationships. In emphasising ‘dutiful wifehood and domestic life’, they ‘effectively wiped out pathways for women to gain status through the feagaiga relationship’ (Motusaga and Howard, Chapter 9). Women’s power was further diminished through the separation of secular and spiritual power, weakening the importance of the latter, in which women held greater authority, and enabling men to monopolise the former. Women’s spiritual power was also unrecognised in West Timor (Bayo, Chapter 10). Here, the failure to comprehend or appreciate Timorese gender diarchy based on difference and interdependence led to its displacement by a gender hierarchy based on dominance and subjugation. Women’s spiritual authority was undermined and they were relegated to a secondary role in political affairs.

Second, these distorted configurations of gendered power came to be institutionalised and solidified through language and representation. In Solomon Islands, Kwara’ae men were edited out of photos that showed them in childcaring roles (Kwai, Chapter 3). In Samoa, early versions of the Bible used the term fafine (‘female’ or ‘wife’) for women, with its negative connotations, rather than tamaitai (‘lady’), which held equal status to matai (male chiefly titleholders). This lower status was then codified and formalised in the Constitution (Motusaga and Howard, Chapter 9), with governance modelled on the matai system in which men dominate with only matai titleholders eligible for political candidacy.

Third, gendered exclusions from power are further solidified through space (Crewe 2021). Gender diarchy in West Timor (Bayo, Chapter 10) was disrupted by the imposition of uniform housing styles during Indonesia’s New Order. The building practices of an outer platform and inner house of the uma kukun (‘dark house’) were symbolic of the gender diarchy of Timorese political organisation. These were displaced by the rumah Malay (or ‘Malay house’), transforming these political arrangements and undermining the authority of women. In Samoa, the national parliament Fono is modelled on local-level fono spaces dominated by men, and coded masculine through oratorical registers and ‘men jesting’ (tala tau sua) (Motusaga and Howard, Chapter 9). The striking National Parliament building in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, is similarly modelled on a men’s house from the Sepik, from which women were excluded. Few women have held a seat in the ‘men’s house’ in the decades since independence in 1975. Parliaments and other spaces of politics can thus exclude through their very architecture—‘built for specific forms of masculinity’ (Crewe 2021: 115).⁶ These are often based on, and solidify, a distinction between the public and the private (see Batalibasi et al., Chapter 7).

Fourth, practices based on men’s experiences and sensibilities reproduce that space as masculine. For example, the oratorical strategies and language of the national Fono are learnt in the male-dominated fono, while practices of ‘men jesting’ are seen as inappropriate in front of women (ironically drawing on their status as sisters in the feagaiga relationships) (Motusaga and Howard, Chapter 9). Politics in this way is (re)inscribed as dirty, and thereby an inappropriate domain for women—an inscription that serves to exclude women from politics throughout much of the world (Jakimow 2023). Discomfort in inhabiting political spaces or navigating the formalities of bureaucracies is also evident in Indonesia and India. Deepak Mishra and Aparimita Mishra (Chapter 11) observe how the rituals, practices, performative obligations and temporality of political life in a border state in India are modelled on men’s life experiences, with women facing challenges adapting to the required modalities and sensibilities. ‘Public space’ is marked ‘as a different territory from life at home or in the village’ (Mishra and Mishra, Chapter 11), a distinction that they argue is an additional frontier that women must cross to participate in politics. More optimistically, Diprose et al. (Chapter 13) show similar challenges in Indonesia, but also how initiatives to move political processes to everyday spaces enabled women to conduct their business with greater ease and comfort.

These four mechanisms—lack of recognition of women’s power; solidifying distorted gender power dynamics in representation and language; the masculinisation of political spaces; and masculinist repertoires and sensibilities to navigate these spaces—have established and solidified the separation of public/domestic while sustaining male political dominance.

Tools of justice: Re-storying and rescripting inclusion

Women consummately navigate these dynamics to carve out space in politics. For example, assuming a political style as a ‘good housewife’ draws on local idioms to create a place for women in politics, which is ‘not too great an affront to social expectations’ (Vijeyarasa, Chapter 8), although it comes with attendant limitations (see also Ghosh and Lama-Rewal 2005; Kidu and Setae 2002). Other women exercise political influence in the home through elected husbands and/or play a role in constituency work or conflict resolution (Bowie 2008; Manderson 1991). Bayo (Chapter 10) instead shows how women challenge the separation itself. Cooking for and with other women builds connections through shared affective experiences while creating communal spaces for discussion and deliberation. Bayo terms these practices ‘“public domesticity”, whereby domestic practices extend beyond private spheres and intersect with public life’, thereby challenging ‘any conception of the domestic realm as being apolitical’, while also remaining true to their roles within the community. Although not explicitly stated by Bayo, the establishing of affective ties with ‘voters’ and building women-based support teams can substantially reduce the financial costs of campaigns by avoiding the vote-buying that is considered inescapable in Indonesian elections (Aspinall et al. 2021; Harahap et al. 2022). In this way, ‘public domesticity’ not only removes a significant barrier to electoral participation for women; it also has the potential to transform the political culture that privileges elite men and women.

Feminist social action would centre women in rescripting vernacular democracies, including challenging the public/private binary. Rita Segato (2018) argues not for a disavowal of the domestic, but for its elevation. Rather than seek entry to and equal status within masculine spaces of politics, ‘we should instead recognize and reclaim the plurality of spaces and the politics of different styles offered by communal life’ (Segato 2018: 206). She advocates an approach of ‘domesticating politics, de-bureaucratizing it, humanizing it by transposing it into a domestic key, but where the “domestic” is re-politicized’ (Segato 2018: 205), as urged here, too, by Bayo (Chapter 10) and Diprose et al. (Chapter 13) among others. In this way, we must seek those areas of feminine politics that have always existed but have been rendered outside formal politics. The goal is not inclusion of women into politics as usual, but a disruption of the way politics can be: both the dramatic and the ‘quieter, more localised and negotiated forms of opposition’ (Vijeyarasa, Part IV Introduction). Scholar-activists have a role in seeking these alternatives, not simply to write about them, but also to expand knowledge of ‘the conditions and possibilities of being human’ (Ingold 2014: 391). The chapters in this volume have advanced that knowledge.

Women’s rescripting of politics as usual gives hope for more transformative change. Processes of vernacularisation are in a constant state of becoming and, as such, can become otherwise. Across Asia and Oceania, women are questioning the taken-for-granted nature of masculine-dominated politics and the narrow conception of what democracy could be. For example, writing about their losses in the 1997 PNG election, Carol Kidu and Susan Setae (2002) argue that electoral politics has taken a form derived from Western institutions and a narrow reading of Melanesian cultures. They call for a reimagining of democracy to be based on the diversity of cultures in the region. Motusaga and Howard (Chapter 9) provide a valuable tool to do just this. Re-storying is ‘to reframe narratives, to draw out new meanings from old stories and to identify the way forward’. They show how Samoan concepts can be retold in ways that create possibilities for politics to be otherwise, through understanding and practising political power ‘as relational (based on obligation) rather than competitive (based on conquest)’, and ‘engaging with the concept of teu le vā to re-story politics as a safe and respectful, rather than dirty, space’. These practices allow for the creation of new political idioms or the reclamation of cultural concepts and their repurposing for greater gender equity within reimagined vernacular democracies.

Several contributors to this volume also underline the importance of who writes these new scripts for democracies. Starting from the diagnoses of what needs fixing, Anna Kwai (Chapter 3) shows that the ‘spotlight’ of an outsider casts a narrow beam that leads to narrow (mis)understandings. To continue the analogy, in contrast, the work of local scholar-activists is more akin to ‘stadium lights’ that illuminate the different elements of culture and history and the connections between them, as Margaret Jolly (Chapter 6) perfectly demonstrates, in her conjoint celebration of the work of Anne Dickson-Waiko, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui and Teresia Teaiwa.

In a similar vein, the collaboration between Batalibasi and colleagues (Chapter 7) centres local scholar-activists, producing rich analysis of the challenges facing women. Researching across Cambodia, Bougainville, Fiji and Solomon Islands, they unpacked the experiences of the relatively small number of women in parliament and executive government through interviews and autoethnographic methods. They frankly observe the difficulties in accessing such women and, even more so, those who have failed to be elected, due to both institutional and personal reasons. Attuned to cultural sensitivities, they found many of their interlocutors were restrained in official surroundings and more relaxed in informal or domestic settings. This methodological observation led to an important insight: the very space around parliaments seems to contribute to a sense of exposure and vulnerability for women politicians, while spaces outside felt more ‘physically and emotionally safe’ (Batalibasi et al., Chapter 7).

Not only women, but also youth, LGBTIQ+, Indigenous and ethnic minorities are challenging their exclusion from formal politics by disrupting the gendered binaries of public and domestic, and the masculinism of states (Stephenson, Chapter 4). As Elise Stephenson shows, across South-East Asia and Australia, ‘trans and nonbinary individuals [are] almost entirely unrepresented and invisible’. As a critical feminist friend and drawing on large-scale participant observation of thousands of people at ASEAN–Australia workshops across the region and in-depth qualitative interviews, Stephenson gives value to these political agents, who, while excluded from formal politics, are not disengaged passive victims. Young, gender-diverse people have been politically active through alternative pathways, including creative industries, non-profit activism and entrepreneurial activity. ‘[T]raditional politics still matters, but it is not all that matters’ (Stephenson, Chapter 4). Diverse actions challenged ‘the deeply ageist, ableist, gendered, heteronormative and ethnically homogeneous political context’ in which these change agents operated. These alternative pathways afford political proxies for marginalised identities and have created safe spaces for political participation in diverse vernacular voices. The conventional ‘political pipeline’ must be wrenched open but, more crucially, alternative ways of conceiving of and doing politics should be revalued.

Within this volume perhaps the most powerful tool of justice is Indigenisation. Salmah Eva-Lina Lawrence (Chapter 5) develops this concept to mean ‘a nonlinear social process undertaken by people Indigenous to that context, which involves identifying, adapting and adopting what is useful from the new and introduced, and building on what already exists’. This process of Indigenisation can be both systemic and organic, thereby pointing to the possibilities of purposeful action, as well as interventions into immanent processes of change. It is by understanding the processes of vernacularisation, the mechanisms resulting in male political domination despite a melange of possibilities and the search for new alternatives scripted by and for the benefit of women and gender-diverse people that such knowledge can become the social action for which Collins called (2019).

Addressing gaps

We are proud of the diversity evident in this volume. Yet, we could only go so far. Drawing from international scholar and queer theorist Dianne Otto (2017), we concede how limited we have been in our ability to use queer theory to challenge the heteronormative nature of gender and politics discourses. We are grateful for and acknowledge the contributions of queer scholars and particularly welcome Elise Stephenson’s queer, feminist ‘insider’ perspectives on how diverse and otherwise marginalised young people are making themselves heard from increasingly powerful alternative spaces (Chapter 4). We know, however, that this one chapter is far from what a broader queer contribution to this body of knowledge could make.

Regrettably, many contributors to this collection have been largely confined to dualistic understandings of male and female belonging and exclusion in various political domains. We acknowledge the profound inequalities and dangers facing queer communities in both Asia and Oceania. Without excusing, but perhaps explaining, the source of our conundrum, consensual same-sex relationships are criminalised in a vast number of nations in both regions, shaping a lack of open gender diversity in formal political systems, including in Afghanistan, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore (Vijeyarasa 2022: 9), as well as in Solomon Islands and Samoa (ILGA 2017–25). The criminalisation of both gender and sexual fluidity often dates to colonial legislation, especially in the erstwhile colonies of the British Empire (see Stewart 2014). Yet, there are many who identify as transgender, nonbinary, intersex or otherwise non-cisgender across Asia and Oceania, where associations of transgender and queer activists have been active in challenging discrimination and promoting human rights for their constituents (see Hamer et al. 2018; Besnier and Alexeyeff 2014; Boellstorff 2005; Kihara 2022).⁷

We are inspired by J. Ann Tickner’s identification of the four principles of feminist research: which questions are asked and why; whether that research is useful to women (and men); a commitment to reflexivity and the subjectivity of the researcher; and knowledge as emancipation (Batalibasi et al., Chapter 7). But we might ask after Stephenson how those feminist principles can be expanded to embrace gender and sexual diversity beyond the binary that has been entrenched in so many masculinist, heteronormative states. As Stephenson argues, researching and writing only about cis-women, in majority or minority worlds, continue to ‘silence and render invisible gender diversity in politics’ (Chapter 4), and present an incomplete analysis of the gendered dynamics of politics. A future ground for research therefore remains in how LGBTIQ+ sexual politics interacts with both formal and informal politics.

Naturally, in one volume we could only traverse a segment of the more than 60 countries (depending on where one chooses to draw their boundaries) that make up Asia and Oceania. Yet, we believe that this collection reflects the experiences of both formal and informal politics in ways that are common to many of the nations not included in the collection. We are proud, too, of our successful efforts to bring greater visibility to Oceania than may be typical of volumes on Asia and Oceania and even our comparative contribution across the two regions that draws together the experiences of Cambodia, Bougainville, Fiji and Solomon Islands (Batalibasi et al., Chapter 7). This chapter showcases a diversity not just of countries but also of researchers collaborating across the borders of scholarly and political practice. It confronts the vulnerability of both research subjects and researchers and the challenges of navigating the research process in an ethical, feminist way.

Capturing the diversity of women and including those excluded from mainstream political thought and action are further challenges that this volume has not resolved. Women at the intersection of multiple forms of discrimination and marginalisation have often been among the most creative and forceful in challenging male political dominance in their quest for rights, recognition and redistributive justice. Dalit feminism, for example, offered a sharp critique of feminism in India, highlighting the connections of patriarchy to other institutions—including but also beyond caste—and insisting that intellectual projects not be divorced from political projects (Ganesh 2016). Similarly, an Islamic feminist movement has been critical to legal reform in India and, more recently, in resisting political Hindutva and state-sanctioned violence against Muslims (Kadiwal 2023; Narain 2008). Ruby Lai’s contribution (Chapter 12) reminds us that there is a need to negotiate space and to be heard among different feminist groups rather than a goal of supplanting one with the other. These examples remind us that we must not only decentre Euro-America and respond to the critiques of ‘white’ feminism, but also be attentive to other forms of erasure within national feminist movements and scholarship. We have barely touched on the richness that comes from the diversity of lived experiences across Asia and Oceania, and from which we can learn.

So, finally, our collection has sought to explore not only the outcomes of research—the ‘findings’—but also the process of researching. We have sought dialogue across disciplines, rather than valuing singular and non-representative lenses. We acknowledge the inequities that exist within academia and hence have sought a diversity of contributors—from honours students to emerita professors—and have attempted to privilege researchers in-country and their participation, as a means of both acknowledging and challenging such hierarchies. We have sought to blur the neat lines too often drawn between practitioners and academics, at times even pursuing a ‘pracademic’ methodology (Stephenson, Chapter 4). We are cognisant of the purposeful strategies involved in bringing together such a diverse collection of authors.

A way forward

To conclude we ask: how, then, might a diversity of voices be guaranteed in research related to gender and politics, and how do we expand the gender and politics community in our regions of Oceania and Asia? We have a few suggestions. First, we must continue to create collaborative conversation spaces that invite in—as Tanya Jakimow did in 2022—‘people working in nongovernmental organisations, feminist organisations, government departments and elected representatives’ (see Chapter 1, this volume). But further, in these conferences, workshops and seminars, we must amplify the voices of those traditionally marginalised, make way for a diversity of language, and support, when we are asked, their compounding, complicated struggles against oppression. In these spaces, we must be honest about our complex positionalities, understanding that many of us see the question of power and privilege through contradictory lenses, and that it is only through dialogue with one another that we come to recognise what Motusaga and Howard (Chapter 9) call our ‘insider and outsider perspectives’. In 2020, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Tongan activist and scholar ‘Ofa Guttenbeil-Likiliki published, through the International Women’s Development Agency, a manifesto for what she called ‘equitable South–North partnerships’ (Guttenbeil-Likiliki 2020). To this end, she suggests a reconceptualisation and recalibration of power in these relationships towards women in the Global South (or majority world), recognising and privileging their knowledge, agency and autonomy.

Second, we must advocate for research funding that builds in equitable collaboration. Feminist research is, by definition, that which seeks to understand the role of power in any given situation. In Oceania and Asia, ethical feminist research—specifically, that which does not exploit, marginalise or jeopardise our partners or participants—is often expensive. Research grants—primarily available through highly competitive bidding—are increasingly dependent on the leadership and guidance of ‘expert scholars’ from the minority world who design, in advance, questions and methods that will be used to explore issues. And, in some contexts, depending on the source of funding, the significance of issues must be framed in the ‘interest’ of the donor or funding body, albeit a government, an international agency or an NGO. This does not allow for co-designed, participatory or even exploratory research driven by the needs of equitable research partners. Unless grant proposals and aid programs build in opportunities for adaptive research projects—meaning research that responds at opportune moments to the identified needs of local groups—the community of practice will continue to privilege the few so-called experts of the minority world.

Third, we must include those who have traditionally been seen as ‘non-traditional’ researchers in our field. Research teams, like all working groups, benefit from the inclusion of very different skill sets such as communications specialists and facilitators, graphic designers, youth group officers and local civil society activists and administrators, to name a few. Including unusual suspects in gender and politics research teams broadens the way we do research, the topics we research, the participants we engage and our analysis, because the discussions of the groups will necessarily be informed by different experiences and localised knowledge. Moreover, those discussions enrich the participants of the group, extending everyone’s research capabilities.

We humbly offer these suggestions and look forward to being a part of the collective reimagining and re-storying of gender and politics.

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1. 1 Alam’s photo agency is called Majority World. ‘The term majority world, now increasingly being used, challenges the West’s rhetoric of democracy. It also defines the community in terms of what it has, rather than what it lacks. In time, the majority world will reaffirm its place in a world where the earth will again belong to the people who walk on it’ (Alam 2008: 89).

2. 2 Vernacularisation also works as a lens to understand how other ‘universal’ frameworks have taken different forms (see Merry 2006a, 2006b, 2009).

3. 3 In navigating these challenges, Hong Kong has also witnessed a persistent but not fully achieved desire among feminist and queer groups struggling against the patriarchy to represent a diversity of interests while overcoming discord.

4. 4 By scripted, we do not mean purposeful writing. Rather, we allude to how male hegemony, including greater ideational power, allowed an organic emergence of vernacular democracy that advanced male interests and power.

5. 5 As these binaries reflected European models of social organisation, it is also the case that the impacts of this binary are found in the politics of former colonising countries, with women’s subjugation in imperial countries mutually reinforced by the ideological forces of colonialism (see Levine 2004).

6. 6 Motusaga and Howard’s presentation at the 2022 workshop gave details of the architectural features of Samoa’s National Parliament building.

7. 7 The film Leitis in Waiting (Hamer et al. 2018) is the story of Joey Mataele and Tongan leitis, an intrepid group of transgender women fighting a rising tide of religious fundamentalism and intolerance in their South Pacific kingdom. The film follows Joey, a devout Catholic of noble descent, as she organises an exuberant beauty pageant presided over by a princess, provides shelter and training for a young contestant rejected by her family and spars with American-financed evangelicals threatening to resurrect colonial-era laws that criminalise the leitis’ lives. Yuki Kihara is a Samoan fa’afafine and a prominent artist. Her exhibition ‘Paradise Camp’, mounted first at the Venice Biennale in 2022, subsequently travelled to Sydney in 2023 and to Upolu Island, Samoa, in 2024 (Kihara 2022).