UBC Press Blog

Gender, National Identity and Prostitution Policy in Thailand

Leslie Ann Jeffrey 2002, Introduction, p. x – xiii.

In particular, the debate over prostitution policy in Thailand is a debate over women’s bodies, which are seen as markers of national boundaries that are to be controlled by the state. In today’s Thailand, the debate over prostitution involves a struggle over modernity and tradition, over masculinity and femininity, over the role of the state and the identity of the nation. In this era of globalization, as in the era of imperialism, states have responded with both resistance and acquiescence to global pressures and influences. These global pressures have not been simply economic or military but also discursive. Prostitution policy, as the site of the creation of the gender and sexual identities that undergird national identity, is shaped by the need to respond to Western representational power. Today, for instance, prostitution policy is guided by the desire of the Thai middle class to shape Thailand into both a modern state (as represented by the masculinity of the men who govern it) and a traditional nation (as represented by Thai women). In other words, prostitution policy seeks to discipline women, to regulate women’s bodies, and to see that they occupy the “correct” cultural roles (e.g., mothers to the nation). In the particular history of the formation of Thai national identity, prostitute women have come to be interpreted as unable to control their own futures. In the discourse of the Thai middle class, prostitute women are icons of the decline of tradition and the (negative) result of a rush to modernity without the proper guidance of their “betters.” In this way prostitutes’ own voices and demands have been drowned out in the modern Thai polity, and these women have become the objects of policy rather than the subjects of politics. Continue reading…

Shahnaz Khan 2007, Chapter 1: Native Informing on the Zina
Ordinance, p. 15-17

Transnational Feminism and the Moral Regulation of Pakistani Women

In a recent article entitled “‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles,” Chandra Mohanty (2003b) revisits her earlier critique (1991) of liberal feminism and its tendency to produce sensational accounts about third-world women as the oppressed other. Mohanty once again argues for a reading of women’s oppression in ways that show the local and global not only as simultaneous, but also as constitutive of each other. Mohanty’s analysis contributes to an examination of my location as a native who informs on the Zina Ordinance for a Western audience. In so doing, I reconfigure conversations about the native so that she is positioned to inform not only on the Zina Ordinance in Pakistan but also on its reading in the West.

The Zina Ordinance is an extremely oppressive, controversial, and contested piece of legislation in Pakistan. I am able to voice my criticism to Pakistani government officials who frequently agree with me and to activists there who are working to secure the release of women imprisoned for zina. Continue reading…

Globalization, Postcolonialism and Chinese Patriarchy

Eliza W.Y. Lee, ed. 2003, Chapter 2: Engendering a Legal System: The Unique Challenge of Postcolonial Hong Kong by Carole J. Petersen, p. 23-26.

Gender and Change in Hong Kong

As recently as 1990, the concept of gender equality did not really exist in Hong Kong’s legal system. There was no legal right to equality in the colonial constitution and no laws prohibiting sex discrimination or sexual harassment. Although the British government had already ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), it had not extended CEDAW to Hong Kong because the Hong Kong government did not want to be bound by it (Byrnes and Chan 1993). Certain other international human rights conventions that applied to Hong Kong included a right to equality, but they were not directly enforceable in the Hong Kong courts (Byrnes 1992). As a result, sex discrimination was openly practised and widely accepted as the norm. For example, women were legally barred from inheriting much of the land in the New Territories, there were discriminatory laws and employment regulations, and virtually every newspaper contained sex-specific job advertisements (Jones 1994; Petersen 1996; Samuels 1993). Since the colonial government, traditionalists, and the business community strongly opposed sex-discrimination legislation, there seemed little hope of meaningful law reform.

Continue reading…