Kindy and grassroots gender transformations in Solomon Islands

Very often in Solomon Islands and other Melanesian countries, ideas of equality between men and women are represented as inherently foreign and incompatible withkastom, the venerable set of social norms that include assemblages of Christian and neotraditional practices and ideals (Douglas 2003; George 2012; Jolly 2000; McDougall 2014). The opposition of women’s rights and Melanesian culture is not simply the position of Melanesian traditionalists but is also reproduced by human rights advocates (cf. Hermkens 2013; Monson 2013). This dichotomous reading of complex social phenomena fails to recognise that feminism is hardly a taken-for-granted part of Western culture and that