The purpose of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of how culture in the Pacific impacts gender equality and human development. The analysis addresses two views that are widely held in the Pacific: 1) that gender is biologically determined, and 2) that culture is a sacred template should not be meddled with. Both these notions have attracted sound scholarly consideration in the Pacific, which has shown that rather than either being fixed, gender is socially constructed and culture is constituted by contemporary milieu as much as it is by its traditional and historical
genealogy.