Indigenous Fijian female pupils and career choice: explaining generational gender reproduction

This paper examines aspects of the school-to-work transition process for high-achieving indigenous Fijian young women using selective data from a wider study of school-to-work transitions conducted in 2005. It appears that traditional and colonial understandings of the role of Fijian women still shape even high-achieving girls' career and life options; these are expressed through their subject choices at school and their narrow career aspirations. While the social reproduction mechanisms of schools are evident, families and communities are also implicated. High-achieving girls still tend to emulate the career choices of older women in their families and communities, even in the current context of a marked lessening of labour market opportunities for the time-honoured “white-collar” occupations of teaching, nursing and public service work. Some provisional interpretations, looking towards productive interventions at school, community and church level, of this phenomenon are offered.