The contours of masculinity: leadership, ethnicity, and gendered power in Fiji’s 2022 elections

This article examines how political masculinities were performed, contested, and institutionalised during and after Fiji’s 2022 general elections. Drawing on political masculinities, decolonial critique, and intersectional analysis, it traces how racialised and militarised masculinities shaped leadership legitimacy across campaign rhetoric, coalition dynamics and the post-election landscape. Based on qualitative fieldwork, the study reveals how dominant, dominating, and complicit masculinities were rearticulated through imagery, rhetoric, and reconciliation rituals. It argues that Fiji’s political transition reconfigured, but did not dismantle, the masculinised foundations of power, offering critical insights into how patriarchal authority adapts within postcolonial, multi-ethnic democracies.