Women and Politics in Thailand

Women and Politics in Thailand PDF

Author: Kazuki Iwanaga

Publisher: NIAS Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 8791114357

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This edited volume, including contributions from some of the leading scholars in the field, addresses the challenges, obstacles and opportunities for increased women's political representation in Thailand. Will Thai politics be different with an increase in the number of women politicians? What are the possibilities for Thai women to take proactive initiatives that aim to transform Thai politics into being more gender aware and equal? In seeking to address these and related issues, the analysis brings together a complex interplay of factors, such as traditional Thai views of gender and politics; the national and local political context of the new Thai constitution of 1997; and recent experiences of selected women politicians in the legislative and executive branches of Thai government.

Making Democracy

Making Democracy PDF

Author: James Ockey

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2004-08-31

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780824827816

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Democracy in Thailand is the result of a complex interplay of traditional and foreign attitudes. Although democratic institutions have been imported, participation in politics is deeply rooted in Thai village society. A contrasting strand of authoritarianism is present not only in the traditional culture of the royal court but also in the centralized bureaucracies and powerful armed services borrowed from the West. Both attitudes have helped to shape Thai democracy's specific character. This topical volume explores the importance of culture and the roles played by leadership, class, and gender in the making of Thai democracy. James Ockey describes changing patterns of leadership at all levels of society, from the cabinet to the urban middle class to the countryside, and suggests that such changes are appropriate to democratic government--despite the continuing manipulation of authoritarian patterns. He examines the institutions of democratic government, especially the political parties that link voters to the parliament. Political factions and the provincial notables that lead them are given careful attention. The failure to fully integrate the lower classes into the democratic system, Ockey argues, has been the underlying cause of many of the flaws of Thai democracy. Female political leadership, another imported notion, is better represented in urban rather than rural areas. Yet gender relations in villages were more equitable than at court, Ockey suggests, and these attitudes have persisted to this day. Successful women politicians from a variety of backgrounds have begun to overcome stereotypes associated with female leadership although barriers remain. With its wide-ranging analysis of Thai politics over the last three decades, Making Democracy is an important resource for both students and specialists.

Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice

Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice PDF

Author: Jane S. Jaquette

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2006-03-27

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 0822387751

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Seeking to catalyze innovative thinking and practice within the field of women and gender in development, editors Jane S. Jaquette and Gale Summerfield have brought together scholars, policymakers, and development workers to reflect on where the field is today and where it is headed. The contributors draw from their experiences and research in Latin America, Asia, and Africa to illuminate the connections between women’s well-being and globalization, environmental conservation, land rights, access to information technology, employment, and poverty alleviation. Highlighting key institutional issues, contributors analyze the two approaches that dominate the field: women in development (WID) and gender and development (GAD). They assess the results of gender mainstreaming, the difficulties that development agencies have translating gender rhetoric into equity in practice, and the conflicts between gender and the reassertion of indigenous cultural identities. Focusing on resource allocation, contributors explore the gendered effects of land privatization, the need to challenge cultural traditions that impede women’s ability to assert their legal rights, and women’s access to bureaucratic levers of power. Several essays consider women’s mobilizations, including a project to provide Internet access and communications strategies to African NGOs run by women. In the final essay, Irene Tinker, one of the field’s founders, reflects on the interactions between policy innovation and women’s organizing over the three decades since women became a focus of development work. Together the contributors bridge theory and practice to point toward productive new strategies for women and gender in development. Contributors. Maruja Barrig, Sylvia Chant, Louise Fortmann, David Hirschmann, Jane S. Jaquette, Diana Lee-Smith, Audrey Lustgarten, Doe Mayer, Faranak Miraftab, Muadi Mukenge, Barbara Pillsbury, Amara Pongsapich, Elisabeth Prügl, Kirk R. Smith, Kathleen Staudt, Gale Summerfield, Irene Tinker, Catalina Hinchey Trujillo

Contemporary Socio-Cultural and Political Perspectives in Thailand

Contemporary Socio-Cultural and Political Perspectives in Thailand PDF

Author: Pranee Liamputtong

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2014-01-13

Total Pages: 538

ISBN-13: 9400772440

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This volume examines contemporary Thailand. It captures aspects of Thai society that have changed dramatically over the past years and that have turned Thailand into a society that is different from what most people outside the country know and expect. The social transition of Thailand has been marked by economic growth, population restructuring, social and cultural development, political movements, and many reforms including the national health care system. The book covers the social, cultural, and economic changes as well as political situations. It discusses both historical contexts and emerging issues. It includes chapters on social and public health concerns, and on ethnicity, gender, sexuality and social class. Most chapters use information from empirical-based and historical research. They describe real life experiences of the contributors and Thai people who participated in the research.

Thailand

Thailand PDF

Author: Thak Chaloemtiarana

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-08-06

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 1501721100

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In 1958, Marshal Sarit Thanarat became prime minister of Thailand following a bloodless coup. This book offers a comprehensive study of Sarit's paternalistic, militaristic regime, which laid the foundations for Thailand's support of the US military campaign in Southeast Asia. The analysis documents the ways in which Sarit shaped modern Thai politics, in part by rationalizing a symbiotic relationship between his own office and the Thai monarchy.

Bewitching Women, Pious Men

Bewitching Women, Pious Men PDF

Author: Aihwa Ong

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1995-09-07

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0520915348

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This impressive array of essays considers the contingent and shifting meanings of gender and the body in contemporary Southeast Asia. By analyzing femininity and masculinity as fluid processes rather than social or biological givens, the authors provide new ways of understanding how gender intersects with local, national, and transnational forms of knowledge and power. Contributors cut across disciplinary boundaries and draw on fresh fieldwork and textual analysis, including newspaper accounts, radio reports, and feminist writing. Their subjects range widely: the writings of feminist Filipinas; Thai stories of widow ghosts; eye-witness accounts of a beheading; narratives of bewitching genitals, recalcitrant husbands, and market women as femmes fatales. Geographically, the essays cover Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. The essays bring to this region the theoretical insights of gender theory, political economy, and cultural studies. Gender and other forms of inequality and difference emerge as changing systems of symbols and meanings. Bodies are explored as sites of political, economic, and cultural transformation. The issues raised in these pages make important connections between behavior, bodies, domination, and resistance in this dynamic and vibrant region.

Toms and Dees

Toms and Dees PDF

Author: Megan J. Sinnott

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2004-06-30

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9780824827410

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A vibrant, growing, and highly visible set of female identities has emerged in Thailand known as tom and dee. A "tom" (from "tomboy") refers to a masculine woman who is sexually involved with a feminine partner, or "dee" (from "lady"). The patterning of female same-sex relationships into masculine and feminine pairs, coupled with the use of English derived terms to refer to them, is found throughout East and Southeast Asia. Have the forces of capitalism facilitated the dissemination of Western-style gay and lesbian identities throughout the developing world as some theories of transnationalism suggest? Is the emergence of toms and dees over the past twenty-five years a sign that this has occurred in Thailand? Megan Sinnott engages these issues by examining the local culture and historical context of female same-sex eroticism and female masculinity in Thailand. Drawing on a broad spectrum of anthropological literature, Sinnott situates Thai tom and dee subculture within the global trend of increasingly hybridized sexual and gender identities.

Gender and Corruption

Gender and Corruption PDF

Author: Helena Stensöta

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-03-27

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 3319709291

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The link between gender and corruption has been studied since the late 1990s. Debates have been heated and scholars accused of bringing forward stereotypical beliefs about women as the “fair” sex. Policy proposals for bringing more women to office have been criticized for promoting unrealistic quick-fix solutions to deeply rooted problems. This edited volume advances the knowledge surrounding the link between gender and corruption by including studies where the historical roots of corruption are linked to gender and by contextualizing the exploration of relationships, for example by distinguishing between democracies versus authoritarian states and between the electoral arena versus the administrative branch of government—the bureaucracy. Taken together, the chapters display nuances and fine-grained understandings. The book highlights that gender equality processes, rather than the exclusionary categories of “women” and “men”, should be at the forefront of analysis, and that developments strengthening the position of women vis-à-vis men affect the quality of government.