Gender at Work in Southeast Asia: Norms, Expectations and Local Manipulations

Research carried out by some of the contributors to WP3 addresses more or less directly the issue of gender in Southeast Asia and utilizes gender as a perspective to engage with issues of work and social and political mobility. In doing so, we acknowledge both dominant and marginal constructions and conceptions of gender and gender roles and explore the meanings attached to such ideas and notions at a local level. The work of WP3 indeed challenges the idea that local gender identity constructions are being swept away on the tide of globalization. Rather, we are aware that such constructions are reworked, rethought and that while some are reiterated others are creatively manipulated to comply with change and new expectations. Such work of WP3 highlights the ways local cultural understandings of femininity and masculinity are always framed against the history and contemporary socio-economic realities of the specific country at a specific time with specific results and outcomes.