Inequality for the Greater Good: Gendered State Rule in Singapore

Abstract

The Singapore state, in response to demographic trends of later marriage and lower fertility, has put in place numerous institutions aimed at “protecting” the family as a unit. In their effects, many of the policies place disproportionate burdens on women, particularly insofar as the policies reproduce “traditional” gendered divisions of labor within the household at the same time that they encourage women to participate in the formal workforce. We might expect the contradictory demands placed on women and the gender inequalities embedded within the state's policies to lead to resistance and/or expressions of displeasure — in ways that could undermine the state's legitimacy — but the policies seem instead to be integral to and enhancing of the state's capacity for rule. This article shows that gendered family policies reproduce state power through three interconnected mechanisms: they establish regular relationships between state and society; articulate particular identities and interests of Singaporeans as members of families, thereby undercutting gender and ethnic identities; and give content to notions of “tradition” and “modernity” that solidify the state's claim to being the only agent able to balance the twin tensions that are at the core of the nation's survival.     

The Double Delegitimatisation of Julia Gillard: Gender,the Media,and Australian Political Culture

This article explores Australian media coverage of Julia Gillard's leadership. It employs a comparative discourse analysis of the gendered nature of media reporting on her sexism and misogyny speech and eventual demise. The article places these gendered framings within two contexts: that of the more general gendered expectations of the double bind facing all women leaders; and the more specific challenge to Australia's women leaders, posed by exclusivist national identity narratives. These narratives — of mateship, the ANZAC myth, and various apparently ideal‐type masculinities — serve to further disassociate Australian women from positions of national leadership. Together, we argue that the twin constraints of gender expectations and exclusivist national identity narratives amounted to a double delegitimisation of Julia Gillard's leadership, on the basis of her being a woman leader, generally, and an Australian woman leader, specifically.     

Women employment in colonial Hong Kong

Women's participation in the labour market is on the rise, and employment opportunities available to working women have increased greatly. However, working women in Hong Kong are still disproportionately underrepresented in higher status occupations. Despite general improvement in their educational attainment, women are still unequally paid. Their role in the workplace is still very much constrained and impeded by their familial role. Hong Kong women's continuing subordination in the workplace lies in the domination of the Chinese patriarchal family in industrial Hong Kong. Women experience institutional discrimination insofar as other institutions and the public at large also subscribe to culturally entrenched prejudices and discriminatory practices against women. It appears that women's subordinate status will not change in the foreseeable future.     

Sisterhood is local: The rise of feminist journals in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Whether as central members in their own households, as workers in the formal or informal economy, as political figures or as performers and artists, Southeast Asian women have contributed and continue to contribute to the economic, social, and artistic development of their societies. Yet it is only recently that we have begun to look at their lives separately from—yet vital to our understanding of—those societies and their histories. Over the past twenty years publications about Southeast Asian women have grown both in number and scope. Since 1991, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has added some six hundred new titles about Southeast Asian women to its collection—double the number it acquired in the years 1981 to 1985 and thirty percent more than in the previous five-year period (1986–1990). More impressive than the sheer number of publications is the scope of issues being addressed. Many topics such as prostitution, domestic abuse, or women factory workers were inconceivable just ten years ago. But the most notable and positive change over the past twenty years has been the growth of publishing by the women of Southeast Asia. Women's publishing, especially feminist publishing, is best illustrated by the rise of feminist periodicals and newsletters that serve to unite women. The myriad of voices found in these periodicals are those of women who speak different languages and who come from vastly different economic backgrounds. We talk about the emerging global village, but these periodicals demonstrate that sisterhood may indeed be more local than global.     

Female Cousins and Wounded Masculinity: Kurdish Nationalist Discourse in the Post-Ottoman Middle East

This article scrutinizes a highly gendered nationalist discourse shaped by a group of Kurdish nationalist men who sought to break with their Ottoman past while exiled in Syria and Lebanon in the 1930s and 1940s. Based on a critical reading of publications edited by Jaladet and Kamuran Bedirkhan, this study elaborates how the vision of Kurdish nationalism put forward by the Bedirkhan brothers, despite its emphasis on the emancipation of women, held the same patriarchal aspects of their rival Kemalist Turkish counterparts. A gendered approach is clearly discernible in Kurdish nationalists' views regarding major issues such as the failure of recent Kurdish nationalist rebellions and the prescribed national duties of women and men. Their reflections on the Second World War during the war years reveal another aspect of the Kurdish nationalist discourse. Kurdish nationalists, admirably watching the Allied European soldiers' sacrifices and victories, unwittingly expressed a crisis of masculinity emanating from their perceived inability to do anything for their own country.     

The Gender Deficit: Everyday Practices of Differentiation in the Chilean Labour Market

We focus on the reproduction of gender inequality in the labour market, analysing everyday practices of social boundary demarcation that exclude women from accessing resources at work. We argue that women's diminished position in the labour market – or gender deficit – is a result of taken‐for‐granted, day‐to‐day practices, conditioning the distribution of resources. Taking Chilean professional women as a case study, we focus on labour market practices that uphold gendered evaluation criteria, reproduce social classifications, and engender exclusion through social boundary work that limits women's access to labour market benefits and rewards.     

The interplay between formal and informal institutions in Turkey: the case of the Fethullah Gülen community

Supporters of the Fethullah Gülen community, an informal institution with an influential role in Turkish political life, have formed an international chain of schools and student dormitories, and a communications web that includes newspapers, journals, television and radio channels, as well as other companies and finance institutions. Although the community has no formal structure, its followers have established these formal institutions to integrate it into formal systems like education and the economy. This paper focuses on the community's educational organizations to argue that, since the community has preferred to pursue its goals within Turkey's existing formal framework, rather than by challenging it or breaking its rules, it can be defined as an accommodating informal institution rather than complementary, competing or substitutive.     

Hybrid Hegemonic Masculinity of the EU before and after the Arab Spring: A Gender Analysis of Euro-Mediterranean Security Relations

In the academic literature on EU–southern Mediterranean relations, a focal point of neglect has been the gendered dimension of Euro-Mediterranean relations. This article argues that the Euro-Mediterranean space has been formed within the gendered global West/non-West relations with the purpose of promoting the West's security interests. Euro-Mediterranean security relations, thus, embody a gendered power hierarchy between the hybrid hegemonic masculinity of the EU (bourgeois-rational and citizen-warrior) and the subordinate (both feminized and hypermasculinized) southern neighbourhood. In addition, it shows that following the Arab Spring the EU has been determined to maintain the status quo by reconstructing these gendered power relations. This gender analysis contributes to the literature on Euro-Mediterranean relations through its specific focus on the (re)construction processes of gendered identities within the West/non-West context in tandem with the EU's competing notions of security.     

Uruguay’s long transitional decade and a new era of gendered activism

This article examines the nature and type of women’s activism before, during, and after Uruguay’s dictatorship, arguing that advocacy during the latter part of the country’s military rule paved the way for an increased role for women in society after democracy was restored. Focusing on the female-led movement to place the 1986 Ley de Caducidad (Law of Expiry or amnesty law) before a national referendum, it analyzes how women marshaled a gendered identity that had been effective in campaigning against the military. Through examining connections between earlier women’s movements and the 1980s, the article explores how challenging a key piece of legislation in the recently restored democratic environment ultimately forged a new era of activism for women in post-authoritarian Uruguay. The article ultimately rethinks the process of Uruguay’s transition, the continual negotiations over what is included in human rights discourse, and the importance of gendered activism in transitional societies.     

Willing Daughters: The Moral Rhetoric of Filial Sacrifice and Financial Autonomy in Tokyo's Sex Industry

Japan has one of the world's largest and most diverse legal sex industries. In a limited female labor market, sex industry work is a stigmatized yet lucrative form of women's short-term employment and advertisements for recruiting new employees are prominently displayed across urban spaces associated with feminized consumption. In this article, I examine the ideological impasses that adult Japanese women working in Tokyo's sex industry express when talking about their motives for pursuing this work. Female sex workers commonly justify their work as the necessary sacrifice of filial daughters. This rhetoric of reluctant acceptance for the sake of others, however, obscures the reality that many sex workers are middle-class and college-educated women who find the financial opportunity and flexibility of this industry appealing in contrast to more dominant forms of feminized labor. These women express the ambivalence of their desires for economic self-sufficiency through narrating the dependence of others on them. Examining these ambivalences, I argue that sex workers’ motivations can only be understood through considering the ethical and moral frameworks that define the gendered economies in which they labor.     

Intersectionality and women's political citizenship: the case of Mauritius

This paper analyses the impact of intersectionality and multiple identities on women's political citizenship in Mauritius. Mauritius is commonly known as a ‘rainbow nation’ with its multiethnic population marked by ethnic or communal divisions. Communalism dominates the Mauritian political system and institutions, intensifying during elections when the different communal groups compete for representation in parliament. The paper argues that the strong emphasis attributed to ethnic and communal representation by the Mauritian political system and structures marginalises women's political citizenship. Political candidates are often sponsored by religious and sociocultural organisations that are male dominated whereas the women's lobby is weak in comparison to the communal lobby. The paper thus contends that the communal dimension in Mauritian politics carries a significant gendered dimension. Communalism has made the political system very resistant to change, despite the fact that it marginalises women.     

Presidentas Rise: Consequences for Women in Cabinets?

Since 1999, women have democratically won the presidency eight times in Latin America and have named hundreds of ministers. This study argues that under certain conditions, presidentas are more likely than male presidents to improve women's cabinet representation. Two mechanisms, presidenta mandates and gendered networks, appear to drive the relationship. Furthermore, because the pool of ministerial candidates is shallower for women than for men, presidentas are most likely to advance women's representation in cabinets at the beginning of their term and for “feminine” ministries. A case study of Michelle Bachelet's 2006 ministerial appointments reveals initial evidence for the argument. Empirical implications are then tested with an original dataset of 1,908 ministers of all democratically elected Latin American presidents since 1999. Model results are consistent with the theory that presidentas are most likely to “make a difference” when they are least constrained by the supply of female ministerial candidates.     

Informal Sector Work and Evaluations of the Incumbent: The Electoral Effect of Vulnerability on Economic Voting

Economically vulnerable voters are expected to hold politicians accountable for their management of the economy because these voters are more likely to be personally affected by economic shocks and less able to cope with the resulting dislocation. Evidence from the informal sector in Argentina, where the lack of formal registration increases income volatility and denies unemployment benefits, is consistent with this hypothesis. Data from Argentina from 2005 to 2006 show that the association between evaluations of the economy and evaluations of President Néstor Kirchner was stronger among those working without formal employment guarantees. The implication is that the electoral support of Latin America's many informal workers may very well be fickle and dependent on economic performance.     

DEMANDING DAUGHTER DUTY

The transnationalization of rural villages in the northeast region of Thailand through women's transnational marriages is reconfiguring gendered familial obligations in the form of “daughter duty.” This article shows how economic and social remittances from dutiful village daughters who are married to foreign husbands connect local villages and communities to the global, bypassing Thai nation-state institutions and agencies that have inadequately addressed the disadvantageous position of Thailand's Isan region. This transnational process depends on daughters' (and mothers') commitment to their care work and to their role as nurturers of the family, kin, schools, temples, and community—the community being seen as a familial extension in this matrilocal society. Women's upward economic mobility and their adherence to valued filial roles contribute to the community's increased favorable acceptance of women with foreign partners, leading to a greater number of transnational marriages. This article offers a nuanced reading of the so-called phua farang phenomenon (transnational marriages) based on an analysis of transformations brought about by daughter duty and the agrarian changes taking place in villages in Thailand's Isan region as the result of the rapid growth of transnational marriages.     

From Polarisation to Integration in Vietnam

This paper analyses the growth trajectory of China and related structural change to assess China's capacity to continue its rapid growth over the next decade. The evidence demonstrates that the multi-path approach undertaken has enabled China to transform its economy from low value-added towards high value-added activities through structural change from low to high value-added industries, as well as upgrading within industries. In doing so, China did not follow the neo-liberal advocacy of freeing markets. Selective state interventions facilitated China's transformation from an agricultural to an industrial economy over the last few decades. Upgrading towards higher value-added activities and the continuing strength of macroeconomic indicators, such as balance of payment and capital account surpluses, and low trade intensity of GDP and debt service along with significant deepening in human capital and R&;D activities, suggests that China will continue to grow relatively rapidly over the next decade. To do this China needs to find solutions to growing deficits in power and water supply, and potentially dangerous political upheavals if growing economic inequality problems are not solved.     

Chachawarmi: Rhetorics and Lived Realities

Latin America's turn away from neoliberalism and adoption of decolonising alternatives to development has been spearheaded—nowhere more so than Bolivia—by indigenous movements. The gender ideology of chachawarmi is part of this decolonisation programme, but has been criticised for disguising gendered exploitation. These tensions are explored by looking at, in Escobar's words, ‘the concrete struggles within particular communities’. Based on long‐term research in rural Bolivia, this article situates the chachawarmi ideal in the multiple influences on the recreation of gender identities, and considers the complex ways in which chachawarmi as mobilised politically may influence gendered power.     

The semi‐formal sector and the Turkish political economy

The general dichotomy in developing economies between the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ economic sectors needs to be refined to account for the ‘semi‐formal’ sector: one whose activities appear to be governed by formal rules and procedures but are, in fact, largely unregulated and unrecorded by the state. Using Turkey as an example of a transitional, developing economy, the paper situates the semi‐formal sector in relation to the other two. Also important to examine is the level of autonomy which the semi‐formal sector enjoys in relation to the state and other economic sectors. Autonomy depends on access to resources, and the use of these resources in pursuit of economic, political, or socio‐cultural agendas. Three comparative lessons can be drawn: 1) despite state endeavours, a sizeable portion of seemingly formal economic activities go unreported and unregulated; 2) the semi‐formal sector helps the perpetuation of a mutually beneficial relationship of mutual neglect between state and society; and, 3) the sector's political agendas may best be characterised as one of ‘oppositional pragmatism’.     

Famines in 19th century Indian history: A materialist alternative to ecological reductionism

This article charts the ways in which gender politics have featured within political landscape of contemporary Singapore. It is shown that there has been remarkable consistency in the approaches of the Singaporean government to women and gender relations in the post-independence period. Gender policies have consistently been interventionist and proactive, and have revealed the willingness of the government to subordinate the interests of women to those of the state. Fluctuations in policy regarding women are traced, and shown to be related to such factors as changes in Singapore's position within the global economy, the putative invasiveness of Western culture and perceived ethnic imperatives of Singapore's dominant ethnic group, the Chinese.     

Excluded from Health? Informal Workers’ Access to Health Care in Chile

The Pan American Health Organisation recently highlighted the increased exclusion of low income households in Latin America from health care. The rise in informal employment and sub‐contracting of workers means that many employees lack formal contracts and are excluded from health insurance programmes. Feminist research suggests low income women are often most at risk of exclusion. Simultaneously, deeply entrenched inequalities within health systems across the region have not been addressed by health sector reforms. Drawing on the case of Chile, this paper examines the extent to which informal workers have indeed been excluded and how far these processes are gendered.