Fiji's Patriarchal Bargain

The Diplomat

17 hours ago

The patriarchal bargain shaping Fijian society has often played out as a man seizing power by force, followed by voters legitimizing him at the ballot box.
In April, Fiji was left reeling after a violent weekend of domestic violence claimed the lives of three women, leaving six children motherless. Condemnation was swift from women's crisis service providers and activists, the public service, faith-based organizations, and the government.
A 19 percent rise in crimes against women in 2025, compared to the same period a year ago, has emerged amid overlapping crises: an HIV outbreak, a public appointment debacle foregrounding a pending Supreme Court ruling on the 2013 Constitution, a floundering health sector, an education crisis, and a bungled public transport card rollout. A 2024 study found that 71.6 percent of Fijian women respondents had experienced domestic violence.
Less prominent in the discourse is violence against gender minorities, particularly transgender people and sex workers, which has also claimed lives. A 2019 study on the socioeconomic conditions and human rights of bisexual, transgender, and gender-nonconfirming people in Fiji found that 83.6 percent had experienced physical violence from an intimate partner.
In 1988, Deniz Kandiyoti coined the term 'patriarchal bargain,' to describe how women sacrifice their dignity, opportunity and self-determination to secure survival under male domination.
As a society, Fiji too has made trade-offs to survive violence — violence publicly spearheaded, at least, by militarily backed male figures. Such a pattern has made Fiji a Pacific outlier in the Asia-Pacific's history of coups. With Donald Trump's rise revealing America's social pathologies, and Sitiveni Rabuka's return as Fiji's Trump-admiring coup leader turned two-time prime minister, contexts may differ and nuances abound, but parallels persist.
As citizens brace for another round of election year posturing, the question is whether Fiji can reckon with patriarchal traditions and cultural norms underpinning its violent present. Researchers argue that Pacific countries like Fiji face a decolonization question when confronting the place of domestic violence within their cultures. Fijians can easily point to prominent figures in the public service, corporate world, and government who are known, publicly documented perpetrators of violence and misogyny. Lasting solutions require an honest examination of the violence woven into Fijian culture, tradition, and faith.
The patriarchal promise is that a woman is safe if she conforms to prevailing conservative norms, and maintains an agreeable, non-threatening likeability. Yet Fijians know that good behavior, age, marital status, chiefly status, or professional prestige have never guaranteed women's safety from public ridicule, professional insubordination, character assassination, and cyberbullying. Such violations are accepted as par for the course in navigating Fiji's public life.
Calls from the prime minister and senior civil servants to respect women ring hollow when only two women lead ministries, just one in three permanent secretaries are women, not a single woman serves as an ambassador, and an opportunity to appoint Fiji's first female president was passed over. Thus, Fiji's patriarchal system deploys the rhetoric of women's gendered suffering while opposing their freedom in practice.
As tired as the cliche may be, sexism partly survives through women's participation in it. Internalized patriarchy is a feature rather than a bug of the system. Even the most prominent of Fijian women's gendered expressions of humility, maternalism, self-sacrifice, and non-confrontational camaraderie with male counterparts may be well-meaning, but also exemplify safety-seeking within patriarchy. Fijian women in public life are not immune to sexism, regressive policy positions, or poor leadership. Yet while such flaws are used to dismiss women's suitability for public office, men can lead coups, justify raising their own salaries while public services crumble, lead erratically and unilaterally, flout transparency, and still be upheld as statesmen.
The patriarchal bargain shaping Fijian society has often played out as a man seizing power by force, followed by voters legitimizing him at the ballot box, hoping perhaps to reclaim agency by surrendering it in exchange for peace and safety. Yet, neither peace nor safety has arrived, as the violence in April made clear. Concerted efforts are more needed than ever, as trends in Fiji's suicide statistics raise serious concerns for Indo-Fijians, particularly males and the elderly. Recorded factors include relationship and family problems, alongside questions about whether the history of coups targeting Indo-Fijians has left lasting psychological and socioeconomic impacts.
Before the noise of an election year reaches its peak, it is worth considering whether Fijians have been getting the raw end of the patriarchal deal. There are encouraging developments with the truth and reconciliation process underway, and a military averse to interfering in politics. The country's steadfast civil society community, a diverse generation of young activists and academics, and a willingness among men to confront patriarchy are helping to challenge established norms.
It is a particularly timely question as the country edges toward gerontocracy. Fiji's current prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, was in his early 40s and the youngest ever to assume the office in 1992. He now holds the record for being the oldest. If re-elected in 2026, Rabuka would extend that record yet again. In a country where life expectancy lags behind the global average, Fiji's political elites continue to grow older.
Statements from within the prime minister's party reveal a culture that views leadership as a vehicle for personal career advancement rather than a public responsibility. Heavy on aspiration, missing in this narrative is citizens' well-being as a leadership goal. Such corporate-coded perspectives are increasingly outdated. Organizational psychology studies show that 'achievement strivers' in national leadership received poor ratings from historians on greatness, decision-making, and political skill, suggesting that strong principles as public servants, rather than mere hierarchical ambition, are what produce effective leadership.
Fiji's gerontocratic drift is reinforced by male-oriented editorial choices in opinion writing. Political sensemaking in traditional media is dominated by older males as sources, subjects and authors, filling opinion pages with fawning features and self-penned vanity write-ups, and wrapping violent logic in gentlemanly rhetoric insisting the same hands that inflict political violence are capable of healing the nation.
While women and vulnerable minorities experience the violent outcomes of Fiji's patriarchal bargain, everyone ultimately bears the cost. As observed of conservative women in the 1980s U.S., 'they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer; they love God; they follow the rules.' This resonates in Fijian society, where nine out of ten women do not report domestic violence, trapped in relationships by poverty, fear, and community pressure.
If patriarchal mindsets persist in law enforcement, and women and the elderly are unsafe in their relationships, the interlocking challenges of domestic violence, suicide, drug abuse, and the HIV crisis have little chance of abating. In leaving the falsities of the bargain and their collective role in it unexamined, Fijians risk denying themselves the enduring safety they have long yearned for.