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Gender and ethnicity are recognised as two of the leading axes of marginality in late twentieth century western liberal democratic societies -- the former emerged in the wake of Second Wave feminism of the 1970s and the latter, with the rise of 'identity politics' in the 1980s and 1990s. Both have similarities. As categories of disadvantage, their basis is 'natural' in that the complex webs of social and political organisation, and consequent disadvantages, based on gender or ethnicity can be traced to physiology, that is, differences in either skin colour or sex. These are also, as Nancy Fraser (1997) points out, 'bivalent categories' of disadvantage in that gender and ethnicity display simultaneous discriminations in areas of resource allocation (Redistribution) and as socially acceptable identities (Recognition). Here, however, the common trajectory followed by these social markers ends. Drawing on the changing nature of society and governance in New Zealand, the present paper argues that the differences between gender and ethnicity, rather than their similarities, expose fundamental attributes of contemporary marginality in increasingly diverse western democracies. This paper advances the following proposition (and contradiction): in the past decade, ethnicity and diversity as an axis of social division has gained credibility and has markedly influenced political, economic and social (re)organisation in New Zealand, while in contrast, it has proven harder to justify gender as structural disadvantage. Thus, while the boundaries of 'gender' are ruptured, porous and, at moments, open to erasure, 'ethnicity' has coalesced to become a new, valid, and increasingly relevant border of social inequity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While literary analysis of Witi Ihimaera's The uncle's story (2005 [2000]) has predominantly focused on the novel's male, homosexual protagonists Sam and Michael, this article intends to put centre stage the minor, but nonetheless innovative, and highly diverse female characters of Auntie Pat, Roimata and Amiria. The complex negotiations of modern and traditional attitudes, sexualities and ethnicities, Māori heritage and Pākehā ideologies that play out with regard to these fictional personae will be taken into consideration, hence opening up a scholarly space and a potential fictional point of reference for the heterogeneity of Māori women's life worlds in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand. Implementing the rather novel research paradigm of intersectionality in literary and cultural theory and combining it with New Zealand-specific cultural concepts, this paper aims at spiralling in and out of the complexities and intricacies of fictional representations of Māori women's identities -- focusing thus, on the auntie's story in The uncle's story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]