Rural Asian Women: Status and Environment 9789814377737

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-The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies was established as an autonomous organization in May 1968. It is a regional research centre for scholars and other specialists concerned with modern Southeast Asia. The Institute's research interest is focused on the many-faceted problems of development and modernization, and political and social change in Southeast Asia. The Institute is governed by a twenty-four-member Board of Trustees on which are represented the University of Singapore and Nanyang University, appointees from the government, as well as representatives from a broad range of professional and civic organizations and groups. A ten-man Executive Committee oversees day-to-day operations; it is chaired by the Director, the Institute's chief academic and administrative officer. The responsibility for facts and opinions expressed in this publication rests exclusively with the author ·and his interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the Institute or its supporters.

"Copyright subsists in this publication under the United Kingdom Copyright Act, 1911, and the Singapore Copyright Act (Cap. 187). No person shall reproduce a copy of this publication, or extracts therefrom, without the written permission of the Institute of SOutheast Asian Studies, Singapore."

RURAL ASIAN WOMEN Status and Environment

by

R.O. Whyte and Pauline Whyte

Research Notes and Discussions Paper No. 9 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 1978

International Women's Year, 1975, and especially the meeting held in Mexico, engendered a feeling of optimism among women in different parts of the world. A realization seemed to be growing that they shared common problems which could, by the efforts of women, begin to be tackled. Since then there has been some disenchantment, or perhaps greater realism. As an African delegate at the Wellesley Conference on Women in International Development, June 1976, wrote afterwards: One thing that became clear at the Conference on Women and Development in Wellesley, as well as the other activities that marked the International Women's Year in Mexico, is that many of our assumptions about the universality of female interest and objectives arc questionable. Apart from the distinctions of class, occupation, environment, etc., the position of women differs nationally, and, even more significantly, from Third World to developed countries. The problems of women, therefore, have to be examined within many contexts and with ;m awareness of differences. 1 Since the lives of women differ so greatly, not merely between those of women in Euro-America and Australasia on the one hand and the rest of the world on the other, but between those in Africa, Latin America and Asia, we felt it would be useful to see what could be learned about women in Asia, and more especially of the typical majority -- rural women. What is known, where is knowledge most deficient? To what extent are rural Asian women at a disadvantage and see themselves as being so, compared with other regions? We discuss here some tentative conclusions reached on the basis of material examined at length in a publication now under preparation. The striking difference in the status of women in South and East Asia compared with that of women in Southeast Asia is of particular interest. The use of the term status has often been contested on the grounds of imprecision. Here we use it in its generally accepted meaning both of standing and of ascribed respect, essentially abstract concepts which are understood in all communities, and which are quite different from the concrete activities included in the term role. In order to understand the contrasting positions of Asian women, the following are studied in this paper: ecological background and historical developments in subsistence modes and the role of women in production; kinship patterns and landownership, and how these have influenced the freedom of action and decision-making of women. The effect of the great traditions on women's position in different Asian subregions is also considered, before a tentative explanation for some of the contrasts which occur is arrivecl at.

1

Bonanle Awe, "Reflections on the Conference on Women and Development," Signs 3: 314-319, 1977.

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Finally, we try to define some of the most pressing needs of Asian women in the future, against a background of the diminishing ability of agriculture to meet the subsistence needs of Asian families. Feminism, as it is.understood in the West, with its stress on the individual's right to fulfilment, has so far affected only a small section of educated, urban women whose way of life -- making allowance for cultural differences -- approximates that of women in the West. Feminism has a following in Japan and, to a lesser extent, Korea. Women leaders elsewhere are more likely to be concerned with greater legal protection against exploitation in the family and work place, the creation of employment opportunities for women, and with innumerable welfare aspects covering health, nutrition, medical care, childcare facilities, etc. Asian women are more likely to see themselves and their families discriminated against as a socio-economic group than as individual women. This is not to suggest that women are not at a disadvantage compared with men. Pay -- whether it be in the form of work points in the People's Republic of China (PRC), the salary of a japanese office worker, especially in middle life, or the daily wage of the agricultural worker elsewhere in Asia-- is often well below that received by men, seriously affecting the significant proportion of female heads of households. Women in Asia's labour-surplus markets are hired in preference to men because they accept lower pay. Conversely, where protective legislation has been enacted and occasionally enforced, men rather than women are hired by employers who are unwilling to give paid maternity leave to absent workers. And despite the modem spread of education -- with the exception of Japan where already by 1904, 90% of girls attended school -- female levels of literacy are everywhere lower than those of men. If poverty or the presence of younger siblings necessitating care during a working mother's absence requires the removal of a child from school, evetywhere girls are withdrawn more readily than boys- There is, in addition, widespread prejudice against releasing a girl, who has reached puberty, beyond the supervision of her family.

Women in Politics Despite some notable public figures, women are not well represented in political life in Asia, though this is not due to discrimination alone. The demands of politics are perceived by women themselves to conflict with the needs of raising a family. Only at socio-economic levels where servants are available, and above all when fathers, brothers or husbands are involved in politics, may women themselves sometimes be drawn in. Women politicians have usually reached middle life, with grown children and fewer

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responsibilities. It has been pointed out that women politicians in office find it difficult to concentrate specifically on women's problems, and few tangible benefits are derived by women from women in office. Above all, politics is seen ;u, a man's sphert:, an unfeminine, almost unnatural occupation for women. Naturally, with few models of "independent" women to emulate, only a small percentage of women are willing to risk failure in the female world of marriage and motherhood in order to prove their worth in the male world of politics. 2 It is not claimed that the low proportion of women in politics is due to direct

male discrimination against them, but rather to the limited utility many women attribute to direct political participation, and to societal norms which place politics firmly in the male sphere. Asian women arc not uniformly passive in public life, however. India has many women's associations of various kinds, and two-thirds of all adult women in Japan belong to local or national associations covering a wide variety of activities, from defence of the peace constitution, nuclear disarmament, consumer rights, pollution control, confrontation on education policies, childcare racilities for employed mothers, etc. When evaluating the position of women it is necessary, but not always easy, to distinguish between direct discrimination against them and their own passivity towards activities which could bring them benefit, a passivity induced by acculturation and maintained by societal norms, often reinforced by low socio-economic status.

Intra-Asian Variation We have been interested to see how far women's status varies in different Asian societies, and to try to analyze the reasons for these differences. It is true that there are great natural variations from East Asia (where the cold nonmonsoon season is continental to arctic) to Northwest Asia (where drought is an anticipated feature of life, settlement and cropping pattern), and between these extremes and the tropical to equatorial areas in the South. None the less, there are many features in common: the monsoons themselves, where seasonal swings are intimately bound into ways of life; the staple crops, grown in similar manner; the interplay of the great civilizations and religions of China and India, the acceptance of some of their features and the struggle for freedom from their dominance by the countries of Southeast Asia; the profound effect that colonialism has had on the national economies and rural 2

Imtiaz Ahmed, "Women in Politics," in D. Jain, ed., Women in India (New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1975), pp. 301-312.

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occupations of most Asian countries, and the shared experience of the struggle to win freedom from this last domination from outside. And it is in this region that sheer pressure of numbers on land has caused some of the most fundamental changes in the way of life of women. Yet it is obvious -- to the most casual observer who crosses the border between Bangladesh and Burma, or formerly from the tribal groups of ·southwest and \\\!st China to the settled Han communities below, or sailing from the Philippines or Indonesia to Korea or Japan -- that the quality of the relation between men and women is totally different. Asia can be divided into three regions: South and Eastern Asia, and Southeast Asia. In the first two, women have observed ancient strictures that they obey their father, then their husband and, finally as widows, their sons. In Southeast Asia, while parental control of unmarried daughters may be fairly strict in Islamic countries, women generally have a freedom of action and decision undreamed of in South and East Asia.

Status and Role in Production What factors have contributed to this great contrast? For long, sociologists have associated the low status of women with an insignificant part in productive work, but examination of the role of women in Asia shows this to be an unsatisfactory generalization. In a pioneering study on women in development, Boserup3 concluded that where population is sparse and swidden (shifting cultivation) the basis of the economy, women perform most of the work; with greater density of population and plough agriculture, men do more work than women, and where land is irrigated and intensively farmed, both put in a great deal of hard work. She associated the first and last categories with higher status for women than the second. Men generally work with high prestige equipment, while women work with lower prestige implements or their hands, another cause for their different status. However, her view that women's tasks are mainly subsistence-oriented and that men work on cash crops, gaining the prestige of deriving cash income from their work, applies more to Africa and Latin America, since both men and women work on cash crops in Asia and on subsistence agriculture. How far can Boserup_'s_ conclusions be applied to Asia? On the whole, they can. Women in early India supervised agriculture, animal husbandry and vegetable gardens. In ancient China, women appeared to enjoy high status until the late Neolithic invention of the potter's wheel and, probably later, of the plough took these important tasks from them. 4 Until then, women's activities would have been 3

E. Boserup, Women's Role in Economic Development (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970).

4

0. Lang, Chinese Family and Society (1946; reprinted. Yale University Press, Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1968).

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comparable with those of women in the vast extent of Southeast Asia under swidden. In tribal societies in Southeast Asia, women are esteemed members of their

hunting/collecting or swidden communities, with an equal say in family decisions with their husbands, and often with a considerable role in community affairs, especially in those groups where men customarily absent themselves for weeks or even months, formerly on headhunting, more recently on expeditions for collecting jungle produce for sale. In both such groups, of course, women's contribution to subsistence is essential. In northern China in regions of dryland cultivation womettJdid not work in the fields if their families could afford to keep them within the home; the same applied, and still applies, in South Asia. Thus Boserup's second category also fits the Asian reality. It is when one comes to the third category, that of irrigated land where women are said to be as involved as men, and where their status is expected to be correspondingly higher, that the immense variety of custom in Asia most conflicts with Boserup's scheme. For if in Southeast Asia women work in padi cultivation as intensively as men, they do not -- if they can afford it -- in Bangladesh or Bengal. And while the lower socio-economic groups in northeast India must work in the fields, neither there nor in the south (where women predominate among landless labourers in Tanjore) do they enjoy the equality of women padi workers in Southeast Asia.

The Great Traditions and Working Women One must therefore seek other variables which may have influenced women's status. It is clear that in both the South Asian subcontinent and in China, around 500 B.C., the position of women gradually deteriorated until their subservient role to men became enshrined in India in the Laws of Manu, which took final form by about 200 A.D., and in China in the tenets of Confucius which took shape progressively in the centuries after Confucius' death. The rise and subsequent spread of Buddhism from the 6th century B.C. absorbed the prevalent dismissive atmosphere. It must be left to China scholars to determine to what extent women's position was already deemed inferior in Chinese civilization of the time, and how far the acceptance of Buddhism influenced Chinese norms. Much later came Islam, in some practical ways greatly improving the position of Arab women at the time of the Prophet, but still keeping women firmly under the thumb of men (see, for example, Sura 4:31 of the Quran). Chinese culture was imported into Japan with the adoption of Buddhism by the court in the sixth century, though only during the seventeenth century, when the Tokugawa rulers of feudal Japan adopted Confucianism (which gradually spread

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from the samurai to the peasants) was the status of rural women greatly affected. Some believe the high status of women was due to their early role as shamans (priestesses), mediating between man and the gods. Gradually their former right to free choice of marriage partner within their villages was transformed into the arranged marriage demanded by Confucian propriety. This was more general in the northeast, where village structure was more strictly hierarchical than in the southwest, which was more egalitarian and where women had higher status. In fishing communities in the southwest, bilateral kin have remained important as women, during the absence of their husbands at sea, have maintained relations with their own families, and arranged marriage became widespread only at the turn of the present century. 5 I

Likewise in Korea, 6 Confucianism was adopted by the nobles during the early Yi dynasty (fourteenth century) but took effect only slowly, particularly in the sanction against remarriage of widows. By I973, however, its hold is still strong, even in the statute books. A woman who divorces has no right of access to her children, not even to an illegitimate child she has raised and supported financially, as in a recent court case quoted by Koh. 7 Yet whatever the general faith -- and one must beware of supposing that rural people observe the rules and customs of the great religions followed by the educated, wealthy or priestly practitioners of their faiths -- poor women had to, and still do, work. The adoption of purdah from Muslim conquerors by Hindus in north India restricted the activities of women of any faith in the north, if their families could afford to keep them secluded. But while the more orthodox Pathan peoples of the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, keep their women secluded, others do not, and increasingly as one moves west women work, unveiled (for the burqa is too costly and impossibly cumbersome) in the fields. All the while they look forward to the time when their husbands or sons will be able to afford to keep them within their compounds -- the status trap restricting women's activities into which fall women of lower groups wishing to rise in social esteem. 8 This applies equally to Sanskritizing lower or outcaste Hindus and to Muslims. In Bengal

5

G.A. de Vos and H. Wagatsuma, "Status and role behaviour in changing Japan: psychocultural continuities," in G.A. de Vos, ed., Socialization for Achievement (Berkeley: University of California Press; 1973), pp. 10-60.

6

M. Deuchler, "The tradition: women during the Yi dynasty," inS. Mattielli, ed., Virtues in Conflict (Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, 1977), pp. 1-47.

7

Koh Hesung Chun, "Korean women; conflict and change: an approad: to development planning." Paper given to Annual Meeting of Association for Asian Studies, 1978.

8

M.N. Srinivas, "The changing position of Indian women," ·