Gender and Power in Affluent Asia (New Rich in Asia)

338 Pages·1998·4.36 MB·English

by  Krishna Sen

Gender and Power in Affluent Asia

The modernising and globalising of East and Southeast Asia have been
systematically gendered processes. In this book detailed case studies of
China, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines
explore such changes in depth.
The contributors to this study argue for a focus on the reworkings of
the ‘public’ and ‘private’ in order to understand the development of new
affluence, middle-class values and indeed modernity in the region. The
volume is especially concerned with the links between femininities,
public and private spheres and the changing shapes of class and nation in
the countries examined.
Gender and Power in Affluent Asia shows the importance of women’s
agency in transforming economies and ideologies. It also reveals the costs
of authoritarianism and development borne by women, and the
contradictory searches for new forms of autonomy through political
action, intimacy and the juggling of ‘work’ and ‘home’.
Krishna Sen is Senior Lecturer in Communication Studies at Murdoch
University. Maila Stivens is Associate Professor and Director of
Women’s Studies at the University of Melbourne.
The New Rich in Asia Series
Edited by Richard Robison
The New Rich in Asia: Mobile Phones, McDonalds and
Middle-class Revolution
Edited by Richard Robison and David S.G.Goodman
Political Oppositions in Industrialising Asia
Edited by Gary Rodan
Gender and Power in
Affluent Asia
Edited by
Krishna Sen and Maila Stivens

London and New York
This book is a project of the Asia Research Centre,

Murdoch University, Western Australia
First published 1998 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1998 Selection and editorial matter, Krishna Sen and Maila
Stivens; Individual Chapters, the Contributors.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Gender and power in affluent Asia/Krishna Sen and Maila Stivens.
p. cm.—(The new rich in Asia)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-16471-0 (hb: alk. paper).—ISBN 0-415-16472-9 (pb:
alk. paper)
1. Women—Asia, Southeast—Social conditions. 2. Women—Asia,
Southeast—Economic conditions. 3. Women in development—Asia,
Southeast. 4. Middle class—Asia, Southeast. 5. Middle class
women—Asia, Southeast. 6. Sex role—Asia, Southeast.
I. Sen, Krishna. II. Stivens, Maila. III. Series.
HQ1745.8.G45 1998
305.42’0959–dc21 97–27163
CIP
ISBN 0-203-44682-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-75506-5 (Adobe eReader Format)
Contents

List of figures vii
List of tables viii
Notes on contributors ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiv
1 Theorising gender, power and modernity in affluent Asia
Maila Stivens 1
2 Indonesian women at work: reframing the subject
Krishna Sen 35
3 Love and sex in an Indonesian mining town
Kathryn Robinson 63
4 Sex, gender and the making of the new Malay middle
classes
Maila Stivens 87
5 Between compliance and resistance: women and the
middle-class way of life in Singapore
Nirmala PuruShotam 127
6 ‘Flower vase and housewife’: women and consumerism in
post-Mao China
Beverley Hooper 167
7 Chinese cultural revivalism: changing gender
constructions in the Yangtze River delta
Anne E.McLaren 195
8 Vietnam’s women in the renovation era
Stephanie Fahey 222
v
vi Contents
9 ‘Dutiful daughters’, estranged sisters: women in Thailand
Nerida Cook 250
10 The gendering of post-war Philippine politics
Mina Roces 291
Index 317
Figures

2.1 The ‘professional woman’ in Ponds advertorial, Femina,
4 October 1995 48
2.2 The ‘professional woman’ in advertisement for Alctel
Communication System, Tempo, 28 May 1994 49
2.3 The ‘working couple’ in advertisement for Vitness
vitamins, Tempo, 28 May 1994 51
2.4 Targeting the ‘domestic-maternal female’: advertisement
for Dancow, Ibu, November 1991 52
2.5 Addressing the ‘Super A’ customer: advertisement for
Thalia Le Spa 54
4.1 Targeting the ‘Asian Family’: advertisement for Selangor
Development Corporation, Ibu, 1991 105
4.2 Visions of a Muslim future: cover of Ibu magazine,
November 1991 106
6.1 The female image: 1976 171
6.2 The female image: 1986 172
6.3 Advertising consumer products 173
6.4 Advertising female-specific products 174
6.5 The Chinese cover-girl 175
6.6 The Chinese calendar girl 177
6.7 ‘New Chinese Woman’ 180
6.8 Advertising domestic appliances 181
10.1 Miriam Defensor Santiago as ‘Top Gun’ on the cover of
Asiaweek, 4 August 1989 309
10.2 Miriam Defensor Santiago’s image change as shown on
the cover of Sunday Inquirer, 8 September 1991 309

vii
Tables

4.1 Malay occupational structure 1957, 1979 and 1990 97
8.1 Primary job in the last 12 months of employed population by
industry group and sex structure, 1992–93 239
8.2 Primary job in the last 12 months of employed population by
industry group, sex structure and location 1992–93 240

viii
Notes on contributors

Nerida Cook lectures in the department of Sociology and Social Work at
the University of Tasmania, having previously taught at Monash
University. She has researched extensively in Thailand, with her most
recent project looking at changes in sexual and gender identities among
women in the country.
Stephanie Fahey is Professor and head of the department of Asian
Studies and Languages at Victoria University of Technology in
Melbourne. Since 1990 she has been engaged in research on
contemporary socio-economic change in Vietnam, focussing on the
‘hidden economy’, changes in labour relations, and the history of trade
unions, with specific emphasis on women.
Beverley Hooper is Professor of Asian Studies at the University of
Western Australia. She is the author of Youth in China and China Stands
Up: Ending the Western Presence, 1948–1950 and joint editor, with David
Goodman, of China’s Quiet Revolution: New Interactions between State
and Society. She is currently researching the gender implications of the
growth of consumerism in China on a grant from the Australia Research
Council.
Anne E.McLaren is Senior Lecturer and co-ordinator of the Chinese
programme, Department of Asian Studies, La Trobe University,
Melbourne, Australia. She is the author of The Chinese Femme-fatale,
Chinese Popular Culture and Chantefables of the Ming Period and co-
editor of Female Matters: the Construction of the Chinese Woman.
Nirmala PuruShotam is Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the
National University of Singapore. She holds a Masters degree from the
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay, India and a PhD from the
ix