Gender Politics in Asia: Women Manoeuvring within Dominant Gender Orders

edited by Wil Burghoorn, Kazuki Iwanaga, Cecilia Milwertz and Qi Wang

This book examines cultural complexities of gender by focusing on gender politics in Asia, with case studies from China, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia. It is a comprehensive volume that examines multiple aspects of gender politics (in terms of dress, healing, religious ordination, NGO activism, etc.) and brings interdisciplinary approaches of inquiry based on in-depth empirical data. In so doing, this book demonstrates the great diversity in gender politics and women’s strategies to negotiate and change gender relations individually or collectively.

"… an excellent introduction to the subject written in a lively and interesting manner, accessible to a general as well as an academic readership. I would strongly recommend Gender politics in Asia as a key text for anyone interested in and/or studying gender roles in Asia." - Colette Balmain, ASEASUK News 46

Wil Burghoorn is senior lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology, Göteborg University and researcher at the Centre for Asian Studies, at the same university. She has done research on gender, development related issues, forms of relatedness and expressions of belonging, in Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh. She has coordinated several interdisciplinary research projects, involving institutes in developing and developed countries. Currently she is co-coordinating a research project on Rural Families in Transitional Vietnam.

Kazuki Iwanaga is senior lecturer in political science at Halmstad University. He was a visiting professor at the faculty of Political Science at Thammasat University in 2002. He is currently editing or co-editing several books on women and politics in Asia, including Women’s Political Participation and Representation in Asia and Women in Politics in Thailand.

Cecilia Milwertz is senior researcher at NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies in Copenhagen. She is engaged in research on non-governmental organizing to address gender equality issues in China. She has published Beijing Women Organizing for Change – a New Wave of the Chinese Women’s Movement (2002) and co-edited Chinese Women Organizing – Cadres, Feminists, Muslims, Queers (2001).

Qi Wang teaches at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Norway. She received a PhD degree in Political Science from the University of Aarhus, Denmark in 1997, and has held two postdoctoral fellowships at Aarhus University (2000–2002) and Lund University in Sweden (2002–2003). She has done research on women’s political participation, political recruitment of women, and the gendered nature of politics in China. Her recent research interests include women’s organizations in politics, the Chinese cadre ranking system, gender in corruption and anti-corruption, and student administration at Chinese universities.

Publication year: 2008
235 pp / 229mm x 152mm
10 figures, 2 tables
ISBN: 978-87-7694-015-7, Paperback

NIAS Press