Cultural safety in midwifery is fundamentally about the practitioner. The consumer, or the recipient of care, must be empowered to determine whether they feel safe, shifting power dynamics in their favour. This chapter explores traditional Māori birthing practices, and it begins with a discussion about the legacy of Hine te iwaiwa, the female Māori deity of childbirth. It examines key concepts, legislation and events introduced from 1769 that highlight the cultural reality for Māori before, during and after the resettlement of Aotearoa. Turanga Kaupapa is explored as a cultural framework to guide best practice for midwives. Additionally, the chapter examines the critical role of midwives in ensuring culturally safe maternity care. Midwives must challenge institutional bias, advocate for Indigenous autonomy and uphold the Treaty of Waitangi / Te Tiriti o Waitangi in their practice. Reflection points encourage midwives to critically evaluate their knowledge and practice through a culturally safe lens, ensuring future maternity care remains responsive to the needs of hapū māma (pregnant women) Māori.

Richard L. Fox analyzes the historical evolution of women running for seats in the US Congress. The fundamental question he addresses is why women continue to be so underrepresented in the congressional ranks. Fox examines the experiences of female and male candidates for Congress by comparing fundraising totals and vote totals through the 2024 elections. While acknowledging the historic number of women candidates in 2022 and 2024, his analysis also explores the subtler ways that gender dynamics manifest in the electoral arena, examining regional variation in the performance of women and men running for Congress, the difficulty of change in light of the incumbency advantage, and gender differences in political ambition to serve in the House or Senate. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the degree to which gender still plays an important role in congressional elections and the prospects for gender parity in the future.

Richard L. Fox, Kelly Dittmar, and Susan J. Carroll introduce the volume by offering an overview of the gendered nature of elections, discussing why gender matters in electoral politics, and providing context for how gender factored into the 2024 election. In addition, the Introduction provides an overview of the volume’s organization and chapters.

This chapter examines what the designs of coins may tell us about the communities that commissioned them. Religious designs featured predominantly, often the presiding deity of a city or a design which referred to it. Mythology and topography also played an important role, often rooting coinages in their localities, and there were references to events or contemporary personalities. Comparisons can be made in relation to artistic work in other fields, such as gems, with a special reference to those who were involved in their creation – the engravers of the dies from which the coins were struck. The engraving of coin dies appears to have been regarded as an artistic exercise, and the appearance of signatures on coins offers a window onto part of the chaîne opératoire of coin production.

Cultural safety requires nurses to critically reflect upon on their personal values, beliefs, attitudes, biases and cultural identity, as the experience of mental distress is often associated with stigmatising attitudes, prejudice and discrimination. The first section of this chapter outlines the historical, social and political factors that shaped attitudes, the provision of mental health care and mental health nursing. These factors have seen care transition from a biomedical and punitive approach to one focused on recovery and wellbeing. Cultural safety is discussed, including how the concept recognises the impact of colonisation on Māori mental health, systemic racism and discrimination. The social determinants of mental health are examined, followed by a discussion of mental health legislation, under which mental health services operate. Stigma associated with mental distress is examined. A central tenet of cultural safety is to be regardful of difference and to treat people as individuals, particularly when acknowledging the impact of trauma. An overview of trauma-informed care is provided, with an example from clinical practice which analyses application of cultural safety.

This chapter uses aspects of numismatic evidence (circulation and weight standards) to examine what coinage can tell us about connectivity and regionalism in Archaic Greece. Coinage spread westwards and northwards from its beginnings in around 550, first in the Aegean basin (Aegina and other islands), mainland Greece (Athens, Corinth, Boeotia, Thessaly) and further north (Thrace and Macedonia). By 480 it had been adopted by a wide range of communities, but they represented only a minority of known states. They are characterised by a number of different weight standards – principally the Euboeic, Aeginetan, Corinthian and Attic. Early Athenian coinage consisted of the so-called Wappenmünzen, but these were succeeded in the late sixth century by the famous ‘owls’. However, Aegina was probably the first place in mainland Greece to have made coins, from about 550, and its plentiful coinage circulated widely. Corinthian coinage was also influential. Northern Greece saw several zones of production, while inland tribal communities produced very large coins as a way of exporting the silver from their mines. All these coins circulated together and are found in hoards all over the eastern Mediterranean, having been used in trade and mercenary payments. A link with trireme warfare is also explored.

Understanding the health and cultural safety of older people is a critical issue in Aotearoa New Zealand. It requires a nuanced approach that respects diverse backgrounds, promotes equitable access to care and supports ageing with dignity. With an ageing population projected to include 30 individuals aged 65 and over for every 100 people aged 15 to 64 by 2028, there is an urgent need to deepen our understanding of the distinct health needs and cultural considerations of older adults from diverse backgrounds. Healthcare providers must recognise and respect the socio-cultural beliefs, values and practices of their patients to ensure care is both appropriate and culturally safe. This includes acknowledging the importance of whānau and community connections, honouring tikanga Māori and other cultural customs and addressing the impact of stigma and discrimination on the health and wellbeing of older individuals.

This chapter explores the invention of coinage and asks what this can tell us about the world before coinage. Money has various functions and can be documented before the invention of coinage. For example, from Sumerian times metals, especially silver, became the dominant form of money, replacing grain, and measured by weighing. Standard weights were used in Egypt, and are mentioned in the Bible. Monetary transactions can also be observed in Homer’s poems and some rare early inscriptions from Greece. Spits (obeloi) were used, sometimes in a handful (drachm), and these words were used later to denote coins. By the early sixth century, silver had become a standard form of money also in Greece. The first coins in the Mediterranean world derived from such practices and were struck in the kingdom of Lydia in western Asia Minor around the middle of the seventh century and were made of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver. Several Greek cities established on the Aegean coast, and controlled by the Lydians, shared in this development, as they did also in a distinct second stage, when in the majority of cities coinage in electrum gradually gave way to coinages of silver and (rarely) gold.

This chapter introduces the process of participating in noho marae (staying at a marae). Noho marae occur within many education programs related to nursing and other health professions in Aotearoa New Zealand, as it provides an immersive experience to connect with te ao Māori (Māori worldview). Such an experience supports the Nursing Council of New Zealand / Te Kaunihera Tapuhi o Aotearoa’s requirement for students to understand how te ao Māori and the Treaty of Waitangi / Te Tiriti o Waitangi support culturally safe practice. Key concepts are provided to support educators and students in preparation for and during noho marae. While the concepts are not exhaustive, the reader is invited to build upon the information in this chapter as part of lifelong learning of te ao Māori and cultural safety. Teaching and learning activities are provided to support individual educators’ approaches that they may bring to the noho marae.

The explosion of Greek (and Phoenician) settlements around the shores of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea saw many of them adopt their own coinages with a rich iconographic repertoire, often religious in nature or reflecting a local activity such as viticulture. This chapter explores the evidence coinage offers for relationships between colonies and mother-cities, in some cases showing ongoing connections, in others showing the development of new regionalisms. Their coinages appeared quite soon after 550: in the east (Cyrene) and the west (mainly southern Italy, Sicily, but also southern France and Spain), while coinage in some of the cities of the Black Sea appeared early in the fifth century. Sources of silver are explored. Some nearby indigenous communities also made coins, adopting and adapting designs and weight standards.

At the opening of Chapter 2 I explained how the introduction and spread of coinage were a part of a new dynamism of the eastern Mediterranean world in the seventh and sixth centuries, and I posed the questions of the extent to which the invention and use of coinage were both encouraged by the changes that were taking place and in turn contributed to that dynamism. Attempts to explore those questions must be based on clear assessments of the nature of early coinage – what it was and what it was not. It is only on the basis of such assessments that interpretations of the potential impact of coinage on economic, social and cultural developments can rest. My aim here therefore is to summarise the characteristics of early coinage as they have emerged in the course of the book.

What does it mean to move to a country, by force or willingly, and then have to navigate a new system, a hundred new systems that make up your new life? Or what might it mean to be born in Aotearoa New Zealand or for your family to have been here for multiple generations and yet to be made to feel forever that you do not belong? Do systems have a place in promoting wellbeing and belonging? What might it mean to work in health care or social services with people and communities that are culturally different from your own? This chapter invites you to go beyond thinking about skills and competencies for working with difference or about models of diversity and to instead zoom out and think about how bigger social and political contexts impact on care. How does the media, your family, politicians and others shape how you treat others? The concept of cultural safety invites practitioners to engage in critical and reflective processes to understand these contexts and histories. It is more likely that if we do so, we might transform the unequal societal power relations that impact on the life chances and health outcomes of others.