Having two books on gender and politics in the two neighboring mainland Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia and Thailand in the same year (2008) is an extraordinary event. That both are published by NIAS Press suggests the willingness of its editorial board to take risks and venture into understudied, cutting-edge territories. As pioneering studies, both works face the challenge of establishing the fundamental structure of assumptions for each country respectively. The fundamental framework guiding Western studies of gender and politics is the assumption of male hegemony over the political process. Given the growing body of anthropological and historical literature on the remarkable position of women in Southeast Asia, I find the uncritical incorporation of this paradigmatic formula unfortunate. In this review, I first summarize the two books and then conclude with a brief indication of certain points of contention.
Power, Resistance, and Women Politicians in Cambodia assumes a place in the historiography of gender and politics of this country as one of the first to engage the topic. In it, Mona Lilja seeks “an exploration of the countless processes of discursive resistance” practiced by female politicians in Cambodia (pp. 1–2). As an exploration of “discursive resistance,” the book will appeal to those with an interest in discourse theory; indeed, the author spends considerable effort engaging this body of theoretical literature. She is concerned with how female Cambodian politicians reconcile their seemingly contradictory positions as females and politicians; their approaches range from downplaying being female to highlighting its advantages. The book is based primarily upon 35 interviews conducted from 1997to 2007 with women who were elected officials or nongovernmental (NGO) activists. Although it reads primarily as a theoretical exploration of resistance discourse, and only secondarily as an analysis of Cambodian politicians, the inclusion of excerpts of the author's interviews with the Cambodian women is a key contribution.
As with any pioneering work, the book has several problematic elements. First, Lilja provides minimal background of the historical development of the electoral process in a country long ruled by monarchs and devastated by the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Secondly, it is unclear how representative the interviewed women are since they appeared to be primarily from Phnom Penh, the urban capital; many seem to be “returnees” who had spent many years living in the United States, France, and elsewhere. Thirdly, although she mentions that the women she interviewed were involved in three different political parties, Lilja does not indicate if there were any gender differences across political parties in terms of their party platforms or recruitment of candidates. Little is written about the process of campaigning. Lastly, despite the importance of language in discourse analyses, she never addresses explicitly whether the interviews were conducted in Khmer or in English (a footnote on page 21 suggests that the interviews were “edited for clarity,” which included “correcting grammar”). These issues notwithstanding, Lilja's pioneering study has begun to give preliminary form to a virtual tabula rasa, helping to lead the way for future scholarship.
The volume on Thailand is comprised of nine essays written by eight authors, including an introduction by its editor, Kazuki Iwanaga. Women and Politics in Thailand is intended as an exploration of “various aspects of continuity and change in the status of women in Thai politics” (p. 2). Unlike Lilja, the authors of this volume are able to draw upon a richer and ever-growing body of scholarship on the role of women in politics in Thailand. In addition to tables, the essays provide bibliographies of relevant work being published in Thai as well as in English. Aside from the editor and one other author, who are both foreign scholars, the authors of the remaining essays are Thai. These Thai authors include highly prominent scholars and activists who have themselves played major roles in fostering women's political participation. Undoubtedly, the most famous is Supatra Masdit, the second woman ever elected to parliament and the first woman to be appointed to a cabinet position. Her contribution to this volume is an engaging, easy-to-read, first-person account of the development of her involvement in the Thai political process.
Two essays in this volume are written by noted academic Juree Vichit-Vadakan, whose activist history includes serving as head of the Thai delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Her first essay summarizes the dominant sociocultural factors that impede women's ability to seek political office, factors ranging from stereotypes of women as inferior (due to menstrual pollution) to more structural factors, such as the failure of political parties to include gender issues in their party platforms and selection of electoral candidates. In addition to provocatively lamenting a “lack of female solidarity and sisterhood” (p. 41), Juree also notes gender difference in the motivations of candidates, suggesting that male candidates are more like to be concerned with “enhancing the fame and status of family and lineage” (p. 30). Unlike the first article which presented an overview of the reasons why few women seek political office in general, her second article is an exploration of successful female candidates in local-level elections. Including several interesting biographies of influential women elected to local-level offices in both rural and urban settings, Juree suggests that there are significant differences across local bodies, and she concludes that efforts to increase the number of women in these bodies must involve diverse strategies.
In addition to his introduction, Kazuki Iwanaga has a second essay on women parliamentarians in which he explores whether the election of women makes a difference in the content of politics. He uses data collected from interviews conducted in 2002, as well as secondary sources, but his conclusions are ambiguous. While noting that the ability of women parliamentarians was constrained by the fact that many of them were new to the political arena, his review of the assignment of committee membership suggested that women did not appear to suffer from any outright discrimination (p. 184). His review of legislation was also ambiguous, suggesting that women were as successful as their male colleagues in getting bills passed involving children, welfare, and social security (p. 191). Iwanaga also includes tables summarizing his data on the role of gender in parliamentary committee membership and legislation.
Two of the essays focus on NGOs. The essay coauthored by Suteera Vichitranonda and Maytinee Bhongsvej describes NGO advocacy efforts to promote women's involvement in politics. Their focus is not restricted to electoral office but includes women's participation in the political process through voting and advocacy. After a brief overview of the history of NGO activism, the authors focus on the activities of the Gender and Development Research Institute in 1990, an NGO in which both authors have played important roles. In addition to programs to train women to run in elections, they describe their efforts to raise public awareness through the media and by working with political parties and governmental bodies.
Cambria Hamburg, herself involved with NGOs, presents a substantive analysis of the differences between national Bangkok-based and local northeastern-based NGOs. In contrast to Bangkok-based NGOs, she argues northeastern NGOs have not explicitly focused on increasing women's participation in politics. Noting that “feminists” were often seen “as women who are only interested in helping women, as opposed to working with the whole community” (p. 110), she concludes that northeastern NGOs operate in a very different political context in which community culture is emphasized. Nonetheless, she comments that northeastern women are quite likely to hold leadership positions—particularly in “hot” controversial issues—as a conscious strategy to minimize potential violence (p. 117).
The essay by Supin Kachacupt presents detailed evidence regarding the number of female permanent civil servants serving at various levels of the Thai bureaucracy. Studying the Ministry of Justice and the police civil service in particular detail, Kachacupt highlights the discrepancy between the high number of women serving in the bureaucracy and the low numbers promoted to its upper echelons. She includes tables that reveal significant variations both by rank and across ministries. Noting combined national and international pressures to improve women's bureaucratic advancement in Thailand, she concludes that “it is evident that international organizations have had great influence on Thai politics” (p. 232).
The essay by Tongchai Wongchaisuwan and Amporn W. Tamronglak explores the political participation of urban, middle-class women. These authors analyze responses from a 2003 survey questionnaire of 300 women living in Bangkok; their conclusions indicate a moderate correlation of age, education, and media exposure with likelihood of political participation. They locate their interest in middle class participation in the context of earlier research showing that people in rural areas vote in greater numbers and are more likely to be actively involved in electoral campaigns than are urban, middle-class women (246–48). Nonetheless, based on the fact that girls are receiving “better and higher education than boys” (p. 260), the authors are optimistic that urban women's political participation will grow.
To the extent that the authors in these two books are embedded in a Western feminist paradigm in which women are assumed to be subordinated to men, they miss opportunities to engage the possibilities of a more complex positionality among the Southeast Asian women of Cambodia and Thailand. Despite passing references to women's economic independence and advantage in inheritance of land, none of the authors engaged the significance of matrilocality and matrilineality in rural Southeast Asia. Studies of women have tended to focus on the gaps in women's political leadership. However, I would like to see more analyses of women's own political priorities, allowing portrayals of women not only negatively as victims but also positively as agents.
Studies by anthropologists, such as Daniel Arghiros (Democracy, Development and Decentralization in Provincial Thailand, 2001) and others, are revealing the extent to which rural women comprise important electoral networks. Hamburg's essay reveals rural women to be politically involved in matters of “family, land and livelihood” (p. 118), providing positive reasons why rural women may be more likely to vote than urban women (unlike the cynical explanation of Tongchai and Amporn, who presumed vote buying or other external pressures). With a better understanding of the differences between rural and urban populations in both Cambodia and Thailand, more attention might be paid to the possible influence of Chinese patrilineal kinship among urban populations (thereby providing an alternative perspective on the concern of urban male politicians with lineage; village Thais did not gain last names until the twentieth century).
As a final point, women in Thailand only gained the right to vote in national elections in 1932, but they were voting as early as 1897 in village elections; this historical fact should encourage the editor of the volume on Thailand to rethink facile assertions, such as “people in more affluent post-industrial societies are much more likely to support gender equality than the people in less affluent, agrarian countries” (p. 2). Nonetheless, whatever idiosyncratic disagreements I may have with the authors in interpretation, I am delighted that debates over gender and politics in Southeast Asia have gained an enriched foundation with the addition of these two books.
