Gendered Morality Tales: Discourses of Gender,Labour, and Value in Globalising Asia

Across Asia, the pursuit of national and global capital accumulation has relied on flexible, feminised work forces and patriarchal models of social reproduction. These gendered patterns of production and reproduction, while central to Asia’s neoliberal ‘miracle’ economies, have also generated powerful discourses that devalue women and their work. Drawing on case studies from across the region, this paper examines the links between these globalising dynamics and provocative local depictions of Asian women as active, desiring, and immoral. These ‘gendered morality tales’ reveal the complex cultural and ideological work that sustains neoliberal models of national economic development. At the same time, these moralising narratives offer insight into the localised negotiations through which marginalised and gendered citizens confront their subordination within the region’s hierarchically ordered political economies.     

The Discourse of Sibling Violence

The present study sought to identify the discourses that exist with regard to physical violence among siblings. The sample consisted of 200 college students (60.5% female, 39.5% male) who completed a revised version of the Conflict Tactics Scales and a self-labeling measure of sibling violence. Findings indicated that while the vast majority of the sample had experienced sibling violence, they utilized terminology in a manner that failed to recognize their experiences as a form of violence. When the data were classified according to gender and level of violence within the sibling relationship, quantitative analysis indicated a difference in terminology. In an attempt to interpret these results from the theoretical perspective of discourse as an aspect of social constructivism it was postulated that the study identified both a dominant discourse that renders physical violence among siblings invisible and several subordinate discourses by which individuals reflect their varying characteristics. It was suggested that future research utilize qualitative analysis to clarify and expand upon this interpretation. This article is based on a master’s thesis conducted by Heather Hensman Kettrey. An erratum to this article can be found at