In what's being described as the "most significant change in gang theme in more than a generation", the country's most notorious gang - the Mongrel Mob - is planning to set up an all-female chapter.
It's hoped the chapter will be up and running by the end of next year.
Leading gang researcher and sociologist Dr Jarrod Gilbert, author of the history of gangs in New Zealand, Patched, told TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning if it occurs it will be a "marker in the gang scene".
But there's no telling what we could expect.
When asked what new direction an all-female chapter could take for the gang, Dr Gilbert said it was "impossible to speculate in some ways, because it's unique. We've never been in this situation before".
"Exactly what occurs from here will be very interesting," he said.
However, Dr Gilbert added there had been considerable push-back from different chapters of the Mongrel Mob throughout the country who saw the change as "completely out of line".
Dr Gilbert said looking at the history of gangs in New Zealand, there were women in the early stages, but as "gang wars" played out in the 1970s and 1980s, women were seen as "too vulnerable to protect the patch - the patch being the ultimate prize of war".
"The lot of women was terrible really," he said. "Chattels there for domestic and sexual purposes only. So from that, then proposing to give them membership is a remarkable transformation.
"Feminism is catching up, even in the gang world apparently."
But the Mongrel Mob has treated women appallingly in the past according to Dr Gilbert, who says the gang was responsible for the Ambury Park rapes in 1986 - "these despicable acts that horrified New Zealand".
"So they've come an incredible way, but remembering of course that this is occurring within these chapters that have proven themselves to be thinking really differently in the last five or six years."
Members of the gang protected the mosque in Hamilton for 20 weeks after the Christchurch terrorist attack, as well as promoting drug free and fitness within their groups, and encouraging members into work.
"What we're seeing here is part of a broader change within this hub within the Mongrel Mob," Dr Gilbert said.
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