Being in the Arena- Part 3
Let us now see how Asian women navigated through gender mainstreaming to find their own voice in the occidental concept of women empowerment.
In the early 20th century, as we discussed earlier, women empowerment and inclusion of women in education sector largely took place to improve the economic conditions of the nations. Orchestrated by their male-proponents, these movements were focused largely to increase volume of the working sector with cheap labor and create a pretentious outlook to the western world. This diluted itself in the mid 20th century when the economic conditions were back to being favorable for major countries and the previously discarded ideas about gender role made a comeback. Femininity was emphasized as a characteristic of women, and the thinking that ‘women belong at home’ returned. This led to the gradual decline of women in the workforce, providing the ultimate power to men.
Meanwhile, this period also witnessed a large number ‘home-grown’ or specific campaigns carried out by women at national level. This was because Asian women were finding it difficult to relate to the large-scale movements that took place in the west and went through a sort of ‘identity crisis’ in clearly defining their reason for these social movements. For large parts of the twentieth century, Asian women activists disliked the word ‘feminism’ because it was associated with ‘Western feminism’ that was defined as aggressively individualistic, anti-male, anti-children, and therefore anti-family. ‘Western feminism’ was branded as alien becuase it was inapplicable to the Asian context. Asian feminism and empowerment were influenced by political deprivation and democratic fluctuations. Activists self-consciously strove to distinguish themselves from their western counter-parts while reaching out for a global platform for their movements.
Translational networking to move across countries for employment:
To mobilize their movements, women began networking and reaching out their national borders facilitating higher employment rate across borders. One such example where employment and these movements went hand in hand, in the face of limited support at home, was the Thai movement for women’s ordination in the Theravada Buddhist monkhood, where link up with female ordained monks overseas helped them achieve their end mission.
Empowerment through employment was achieved through powerful allies that were created internationally. Women across the globe supported each other to debate women’s questions and global patriarchy. Many national level movements collectively led to increase of Asian women in the arena. These indigenized movements had their own grand narrative of feminism and women empowerment. All of these movements were reformed with more women being educated and crafting their skills in fields that were dominated by men. By the end of 20th century, these small movements combined to form a bigger bubble and brought in a social awareness which ultimately pushed the United Nations Economic and Social Commission to form ‘The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action’ in 1995. A visionary agenda for women to analyze the situation of women around the world and to assess the efforts of States in support of women’s empowerment. Followed by the mobilization of over 40,000 government delegates, experts and civil society representatives at the Fourth World Conference on Women, the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action embodies the commitment of the international community to achieve gender equality and to provide better opportunities for women and girls. The Plan of Action is reviewed every five years by the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and recommendations on global and regional level are received for betterment of women.