In the year 2000, United Nations world leaders set out eight targets, the UN Millennium Development Goals, for achieving improved standards of living at the micro level in poorer nations around the globe, by the year 2015. The papers in this collection present fine-detailed ethnographic studies of cultures in Africa and Oceania, with a focus primarily on MDG 3, targeted to “promote gender equality and empower women” and MDG 5, targeted to “improve maternal health” to ascertain whether or not these goals have made or missed their mark. Ethnographic case studies located in Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Ghana, Malawi, Cameroon, and South Ethiopia show that women in these cultures, regardless of nation state, face the same issues or problems—lack of empowerment, gender inequities, and inadequate access to cultural or state resources—to realize good health in general and good maternal and reproductive health, in particular.

Naomi McPherson is Associate Professor Emerita, Cultural Anthropology, the University of British Columbia, Kelowna. From 1980 to 2009 she has returned six times to her field site in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea to live and learn among the Bariai. She focusses on Bariai world view; life cycle ceremonies for the firstborn child and the dead; mythology, the pre-and post missionization belief system and ritual; gender concepts and gender relations; gendered violence; ethno-obstetrics, women’s maternal and reproductive health. Selected publications include: Childbirth: A Case History from West New Britain, Papua New Guinea, Oceania 1986; Modern Obstetrics in a Rural Setting: Women and Reproduction in Northwest New Britain, Urban Anthropology 1994; Women, Childbirth and Change in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Ed. P. Liamputtong, 2007; Sik AIDS: Deconstructing the Awareness Campaign in Rural West New Britain, PNG, Eds. R. Eves and L. Butt 2008; Myth, Women and the Female Ideal in Bariai, Ed. S. Dunis, 2008; Anthropology of Mothering. Eds. M. Walks and N. McPherson, Demeter 2011; Black and Blue: Shades of Gendered Violence in West New Britain, PNG, Ed. C. Stewart 2012. From 2011-2015 she was Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Anthropology Society journal, Anthropologica, and is currently preparing an ethnography of Bariai culture from the 1920s to present day.

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