Defending Women, Defending Rights: A Development Perspective
(by Sarah Beckerman)
Upon first glance it seems as though gender equality in Thailand should be a non-issue. Thai women are an active group, clearly represented in executive positions in such sectors as business, education, and medicine. Thai women have enjoyed the vote since before World War II. Female literacy is high compared to neighboring countries, and the gender gap is small. The ratio of girls to boys in tertiary education was 1.15 in 2001. Why, then, must we specifically address women in development projects?
Statistics are misleading; although the aforementioned data seems optimistic, an equal amount of opposing data can be found. Women, for example, comprise eighty percent of the labor force working in export-oriented factory occupations, in which working conditions are deplorable, work security is unheard of, and medical provisions are scarce. Most of these women are indigenous. Many argue that the gender stratification of work often parallels a nation's status in the world order, which in this case would lead one to believe that Thailand must be near the bottom of the ranks. Although the ratio of women to men in tertiary education is excellent, the absolute numbers are quite low, while Thailand has the lowest proportional enrolment of girls in secondary school in the Southeast Asian region. Exacerbating this situation is the fact that many indigenous women are barred from attending official educational institutions due to lack of citizenship, monetary resources, or the sheer remoteness of their communities.
Rapid industrialization has also led to an increasing amount of pressure on women, affecting both their role and status within society. As cash-cropping has been promoted by the Thai government and largely adopted by the indigenous community, we have witnessed a power shift within the household, with the men now holding greater power as they represent the chief source of family income. A Marxist perspective would posit male control of capital as the driving force for unequal development between the genders. Women are still involved in the cultivation process, which is indeed laborious and time-consuming, but have lost their control over capital with the switch to cash cropping and the monetization of local economies. With this loss of economic control comes a loss of power. Women have also been forced to give up the prestige and knowledge they held vis-a-vis systems of production because the traditional subsistence farming techniques have in many cases been abandoned. The labour-intensive nature of cash-cropping has led to an almost complete loss of free time for women as they are now obliged to conduct extremely long hours of agricultural work.
Cash cropping and other agrarian projects implemented by the Thai government tend be male-oriented, despite the fact that women now comprise an estimated six to seven million agricultural workers. As the global market economy pervades the villages, 'outside' values become more prominent and people begin to consume more, leading to an exodus of the small amount of cash that is obtained by the villagers. While men tend to seek wage labor, women are left taking care of the family on a very small amount of capital. Under this strain, it is the women who suffer the most as they sacrifice their own needs for the family and must search for alternative sources of food in the face of a dwindling natural resource base. It has even been asserted that while women may take on income-generating activities and familial duties simultaneously, a man is highly unlikely to do the same, leaving the woman fatigued and over-worked.
Rapid industrialization has also led to a rural emigration in search of greater opportunities in the cities. While women head one quarter of rural households, the number of women migrating to the cities surpasses the number of migrating males by three million. These figures represent the increased responsibility modernization has placed on women on the one hand, and desperation for financial alternatives on the other. Women seem to have been bearing the brunt of the development effort in Thailand, with a double burden for those who happen to be both women and indigenous. In fact, many academics attribute Thailand's spectacular growth to the country's ability to "mobilize women's labor for low-skill tasks, while women's status has possibly even declined with development".
While the Thai government tolerates a large amount of criticism for its policies toward women, some development attempts have occurred that warrant credit. The new Constitution passed in 1997 provides for equal rights and protection between the two sexes. The Beijing Platform for Action, signed by the Thai government in September 1995, includes a promise to raise the status of women through national efforts. Thailand is also a signatory to both the United Nation's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In the Thai Government's Report on the Status of the Millennium Development Goals 2004, one of their major aims was to promote gender equality and to empower women. In fact, the government officially recognizes the flaw in relying solely on aggregate numbers, clearly stating in their report that despite the attractiveness of some national statistics, much work still lies ahead. They pay particular attention to the fact that while women can run for leaders of local Tambon Administrative Organizations (TAOs), few actually do. As well, women are disproportionately represented in economically vulnerable work such as manufacturing and textiles. They have stated five major subgoals concerning gender, which seem quite ambitious:
- to close the remaining gender gaps in education
- to increase opportunities for women in government
- to reduce violence against women
- to promote awareness about gender issues
- to improve collection, analysis and use of gender-disaggregated data
It is interesting to note is that while the government seems to be very aggressive and optimistic in setting its goals for gender equality, not once in the MDG Report of 2004 are indigenous women specifically targeted as a group with special needs. In fact, the word indigenous does not matriculate once in the entire paper. However, as cited previously, indigenous women make up a large percentage of at-risk workers in the informal and export-oriented sector. Indigenous women are also the group of rural workers that are most suffering, as stated previously, due to the introduction of cash crops and the dwindling resource base in the Northern Hills. This lack of reference is puzzling, but it is more understandable once one takes into account the policies of the government toward indigenous peoples in general.
Official activities undertaken by the government still seem to revolve around the antiquated method of attempting to change indigenous culture to be more ‘modern'. Indigenous people have no rights to participate in the decision-making process related to their communities and livelihoods, despite the fact that one of the government's goals for women is the improvement of their the political status. Another example of these contradictions would be the way in which the government, even today, is evicting and relocating entire indigenous communities. The recent anti-terror programs involving land zoning and restrictions on the travel of indigenous people are another example of similarly discriminatory and harsh governmental policies. These policies are in direct contradiction with the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UNICESCR), of which Thailand is a signatory, and which clearly states that "all peoples have the right to self-determination". By being evicted and restricted in movement and opportunities, the Hill Tribe people's rights are violated by the Thai government.
It would seem that although the State is attempting to diminish gender disparities, these efforts do not apply to indigenous women. While in Thailand an open attitude can be observed towards women's issues in general, the same cannot be said for the government's view of indigenous populations. The Thai government did ask for NGO help in drafting the Eighth National Economic and Social Development Plan (1997-2001), in an attempt to accurately target women as one of the groups needing attention, but particular mention of indigenous women was, again, absent. Regardless of this fact, many consider that indigenous women's issues in Thailand cannot be solved through laws and regulations alone. Rather, a deeper change needs to take place at the level of family values, yet this change cannot be brought about by the government's actions alone. The Asia Public Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) seeks to fill this gap left by government action (or perceived inaction), to aid the governments in developing appropriate policies towards all women, and to present and tackle new obstacles for Asian Women.
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