Thailand

Officialising Strategies: Participatory Processes and Gender in Thailand's Water Resources Sector

Citation:

Resurrección, Bernadette P., Mary Jane Real, and Panadda Pantana. 2004. “Officialising Strategies: Participatory Processes and Gender in Thailand’s Water Resources Sector.” Development in Practice 14 (4): 521–33.

Authors: Bernadette P. Resurrección, Mary Jane Real, Panadda Pantana

Abstract:

This paper examines participatory processes in an Asian Development Bank (ADB) technical assistance package in Thailand's water resource sector. The authors analyse various levels of social interaction in the local community, in meso-level stakeholder consultations, and in opposition to ADB's environment programmes expressed by civil society organisations. While participatory approaches are employed to promote more bottom-up management regimes in water resources, the authors find that local power and gender differences have been overlooked. Evolving institutions of resource governance are constituted by gender, reproducing gender inequalities such as regarding water intended for agricultural use as a 'male' resource. Finally, it is argued that understandings and practices of participation legitimise particular agendas in a politically polarised arena.

Topics: Agriculture, Civil Society, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Gender Hierarchies, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, International Organizations Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Thailand

Year: 2004

Constructing Humanitarian Selves and Refugee Others

Citation:

Olivius, Elisabeth. 2016. “Constructing Humanitarian Selves and Refugee Others.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 18 (2): 270–90.

Author: Elisabeth Olivius

Abstract:

Contributing to ongoing debates about what happens when feminism is institutionalized in global governance, this article examines how gender equality is given meaning and applied in humanitarian aid to refugees, and what the implications are with regard to the production of subjectivities and their positioning in relations of power. Drawing on Foucauldian and postcolonial feminist perspectives, the analysis identifies two main representations of what it means to promote gender equality in refugee situations. Gender equality is represented as a means to aid effectiveness through the strategic mobilization of refugee women's participation, and as a project of development, involving the transformation of “traditional” or “backward” refugee cultures into modern societies. The subject positions that are produced categorically cast refugees as either passive or problematic subjects who need to be rescued, protected, assisted, activated, controlled and reformed through humanitarian interventions, while humanitarian workers are positioned as rational administrators and progressive agents of social transformation. In effect, gender equality is used to sustain power asymmetries in refugee situations and to reproduce global hierarchies.

Keywords: global governance, gender equality, refugees, humanitarian aid, governmentality, postcolonial feminism, Thailand, Bangladesh

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugee/IDP Camps, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Humanitarian Assistance, NGOs Regions: Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Bangladesh, Thailand

Year: 2016

Women, Ecology and Health: Rebuilding Connections

Citation:

Hamrell, Sven, and Olle Nordberg, eds. 1993. Women, Ecology and Health: Rebuilding Connections. Uppsala, Sweden: The Dag Hammarskjöld Centre and Kali for Women.

Authors: Sven Hamrell, Olle Nordberg

Annotation:

Summary:
The seminar on 'Women, Ecology and Health: Rebuilding Connections', which has provided the basis for the material presented in this issue of Development Dialogue, was held in Bangalore in southern India from July 17 to 22, 1991. It was jointly organised by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy, Dehra Dun, India, and moderated by the Director of the latter foundation, Vandana Shiva. It brought together 25 participants from seven South Asian and Southeast Asian countries and one participant from the United States. Both foundations are grateful to the participants for their valuable contributions to the seminar discussions and to the authors for the pains they have taken in thoroughly revising and updating their papers.The basic idea behind the organisation of the Bangalore seminar was the conviction that, twenty years after 'the Environment' was placed on the international agenda, the time was ripe to take stock, from a women's perspective, of two decades of development in the environmental field. Furthermore, an important factor was the growing recognition that across the world women are rebuilding connections with nature and renewing the insight that what people do to nature directly affects them, too; that there is, in fact, no insular divide between the environment and their own bodies and health (Summary from original source).

Table of Contents:

  1. Women, Ecology and Health: An Introduction
    Vandana Shiva
  2. After the Forest: AIDS as Ecological Collapse in Thailand
    Ann Danaiya Usher
  3. Killing Legally with Toxic Waste: Women and the Environment in the United States
    Penny Newman
  4. Environmental Degradation and Subversion of Health
    Mira Shiva
  5. Using Technology, Choosing Sex the Campaign Against Sex Determination and the Question of Choice
    FASDSP Group
  6. Legal Rights… and Wrongs: Internationalising Bhopal
    Indira Jaising, C. Sathyamala
  7. ‘Green Earth, Women’s Power, Human Liberation’: Women in Peasant Movements in India
    Gail Omvedt
  8. Filipino Peasant Women in Defence of Life
    Loreta B. Ayupan, Teresita G. Oliveros
  9. Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka: Its Ecological and Political Consequences
    Rita Sebastian
  10. The Seed and the Earth: Biotechnology and the Colonisation of Regeneration
    Vandana Shiva

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Environment, Ethnicity, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Health Regions: Americas, North America, Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: India, Thailand, United States of America

Year: 1993

Gender and Natural Resource Management: Livelihoods, Mobility and Interventions

Citation:

Resurrección, Bernadette P., and Rebecca Elmhirst. 2012. Gender and Natural Resource Management: Livelihoods, Mobility and Interventions. Abingdon: Routledge.

Authors: Bernadette P. Resurrección, Rebecca Elmhirst

Annotation:

Summary:
This book is about the gender dimensions of natural resource exploitation and management, with a focus on Asia. It explores the uneasy negotiations between theory, policy and practice that are often evident within the realm of gender, environment and natural resource management, especially where gender is understood as a political, negotiated and contested element of social relationships. It offers a critical feminist perspective on gender relations and natural resource management in the context of contemporary policy concerns: decentralized governance, the elimination of poverty and the mainstreaming of gender. Through a combination of strong conceptual argument and empirical material from a variety of political economic and ecological contexts (including Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam), the book examines gender-environment linkages within shifting configurations of resource access and control. The book will serve as a core resource for students of gender studies and natural resource management, and as supplementary reading for a wide range of disciplines including geography, environmental studies, sociology and development. It also provides a stimulating collection of ideas for professionals looking to incorporate gender issues within their practice in sustainable development. Published with IDRC. (Summary from Routledge)

Topics: Development, Economies, Poverty, Environment, Feminisms, Gender Regions: Asia Countries: Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam

Year: 2012

Water Insecurity in Disaster and Climate Change Contexts: A Feminist Political Ecology View

Citation:

Resurrección, Bernadette P. 2019. “Water Insecurity in Disaster and Climate Change Contexts: A Feminist Political Ecology View.” In People and Climate Change: Vulnerability, Adaptation, and Social Justice, edited by Lisa Reyes Mason and Jonathan Rigg, 51–67. New York: Oxford University Press. 
 

Author: Bernadette P. Resurrección

Keywords: feminist political ecology, water, neoliberalism, emotions, subjectivities

Annotation:

Summary:
This chapter applies a feminist political ecology lens to episodes of climate change-related water insecurity in three Southeast Asian peri-urban area sites affected by flooding, water shortages, and pollution induced by long dry spells and heavy precipitation. It presents highlights from a 3-year research project that examined the everyday lives of women as they “deal with water” in the context of increasing water pollution, water scarcity, and flooding compounded by neoliberal socioeconomic conditions. These accounts illustrate how in water- and climate-change contexts, the neoliberal logics of privatization, commercialization, and reified separation between “the natural” and “the social” engage closely with emotions and intersectional gender subjectivities. The use of a feminist political ecology lens offers more holistic and grounded ways of probing into people’s experiences of climate-related water insecurity and stresses, aspects of which are often missed: gendered violence, hierarchies of place, affect, and insecurity in everyday life. (Summary from Oxford Scholarship Online)
 

Topics: Economies, Environment, Climate Change, Environmental Disasters, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Women, Privatization, Violence Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam

Year: 2019

Adolescents’ Perceptions and Experiences of Pregnancy in Refugee and Migrant Communities on the Thailand-Myanmar Border: A Qualitative Study

Citation:

Asnong, Carine, Gracia Fellmeth, Emma Plugge, Nan San Wai, Mupawjay Pimanpanarak, Moo Kho Paw, Prakaykaew Charunwatthana, Nosten François, and Rose McGready. 2018. “Adolescents’ Perceptions and Experiences of Pregnancy in Refugee and Migrant Communities on the Thailand-Myanmar Border: A Qualitative Study.” Reproductive Health 15 (1): 1–13. 

Authors: Carine Asnong, Gracia Fellmeth, Emma Plugge, Nan San Wai, Mupawjay Pimanpanarak, Moo Kho Paw, Prakaykaew Charunwatthana, Nosten François, Rose McGready

Abstract:

Background: Adolescent pregnancy remains a global health concern, contributing to 11% of all births worldwide and 23% of the overall burden of disease in girls aged 15–19 years. Premature motherhood can create a negative cycle of adverse health, economic and social outcomes for young women, their babies and families. Refugee and migrant adolescent girls might be particularly at risk due to poverty, poor education and health infrastructure, early marriage, limited access to contraception and traditional beliefs. This study aims to explore adolescents’ perceptions and experiences of pregnancy in refugee and migrant communities on the Thailand-Myanmar border.

Methods: In June 2016 qualitative data were collected in one refugee camp and one migrant clinic along the Thailand-Myanmar border by conducting 20 individual interviews with pregnant refugee and migrant adolescents and 4 focus group discussions with husbands, adolescent boys and non-pregnant girls and antenatal clinic staff. Inductive thematic analysis was used to identify codes and themes emerging from the data.

Results: Study participants perceived adolescent pregnancy as a premature life event that could jeopardise their future. Important themes were premarital sex, forced marriage, lack of contraception, school dropout, fear of childbirth, financial insecurity, support structures and domestic violence. Supportive relationships with mothers, husbands and friends could turn this largely negative experience into a more positive one. The main underlying reasons for adolescent pregnancy were associated with traditional views and stigma on sexual and reproductive health issues, resulting in a knowledge gap on contraception and life skills necessary to negotiate sexual and reproductive choices, in particular for unmarried adolescents.

Conclusions: Adolescents perceive pregnancy as a challenging life event that can be addressed by developing comprehensive adolescent-friendly sexual and reproductive health services and education in refugee and migrant communities on the Thailand-Myanmar border. Creating a more tolerant and less stigmatising environment in these communities and their governing bodies will help to achieve this goal.

Keywords: adolescent pregnancy, Myanmar, migrant, Qualitative, refugee, sexual and reproductive health, contraception, Stigma, forced marriage, domestic violence

Topics: Age, Youth, Armed Conflict, Displacement & Migration, Migration, Refugees, Domestic Violence, Gender, Women, Girls, Health, Reproductive Health Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Myanmar, Thailand

Year: 2018

Making Space for Women: Civil Society Organizations, Gender and Hydropower Development in the Mekong Region

Citation:

Lebel, Phimphakan, Louis Lebel, Darunee Singphonphrai, Chatta Duangsuwan, and Yishu Zhou. 2019. “Making Space for Women: Civil Society Organizations, Gender and Hydropower Development in the Mekong Region.” International Journal of Water Resources Development 35 (2): 305-25.

Authors: Phimphakan Lebel, Louis Lebel, Darunee Singphonphrai, Chatta Duangsuwan, Yishu Zhou

Abstract:

Large-scale hydropower development disrupts local livelihoods and resource access. Adverse impacts are often greater for women than men, but also large for children, the elderly, poorer households and ethnic minorities. Burdens of resettlement often fall disproportionately on already disadvantaged individuals. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how international, national and local civil society organizations (CSOs) have addressed gender in hydropower development in the Mekong Region. Four CSO orientations are distinguished: communitarian, environmentalist, knowledge-based and feminist. Common activities of CSOs were to share information, to expand participation and to mobilize development. The extent to which these activities were promoted and appear to be making space for women depended on the types of CSOs and women and men targeted or otherwise involved. 

Keywords: civil society organizations, gender, hydropower, Mekong

Topics: Age, Youth, Civil Society, Displacement & Migration, Development, Economies, Poverty, Environment, Ethnicity, Feminisms, Gender, Livelihoods Regions: Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam

Year: 2019

Gender in Development Discourses of Civil Society Organisations and Mekong Hydropower Dams

Citation:

Lebel, Louis, Phimphakan Lebel, Kanokwan Manorom, and Zhou Yishu. 2019. “Gender in Development Discourses of Civil Society Organisations and Mekong Hydropower Dams.” Water Alternatives 12 (1): 192–220.

Authors: Louis Lebel, Phimphakan Lebel, Kanokwan Manorom, Zhou Yishu

Abstract:

'Gender in development' discourses are used to justify interventions into, or opposition to, projects and policies; they may also influence perceptions, practices, or key decisions. Four discursive threads are globally prominent: livelihoods and poverty; natural resources and the environment; rights-based; and managerial. Civil society organisations (CSOs) have been vocal in raising awareness about the adverse impacts of large-scale hydropower developments on the environment, on local livelihoods, and on vulnerable groups including women. This discourse analysis first examines how CSOs engaging in hydropower processes in the Mekong Region frame and use gender in development discourses, and then evaluates the potential of these discourses to empower both women and men. Documents authored by CSOs are examined in detail for how gender is represented, as are media reports on CSO activities, interview transcripts, and images. The findings underline how CSOs depend on discursive legitimacy for influence. Their discursive strategies depend on three factors: the organizations’ goals with respect to development, gender, and the environment; whether the situation is pre- or post-construction; and, on their relationships with the state, project developers and dam-affected communities. The implications of these strategies for empowerment are often not straightforward; inadvertent and indirect effects, positive and negative, are common. The findings of this study are of practical value to CSOs wishing to be more reflexive in their work and more responsive to how it is talked about, as it shows the ways that language and images may enhance or inadvertently work against efforts to empower women.

Keywords: civil society organisations, gender in development, discourse, representation, hydropower

Topics: Civil Society, Development, Environment, Gender, Infrastructure, Energy, Livelihoods Regions: Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam

Year: 2019

The Negotiation of Women in Conflict Situations in the Deep South of Thailand

Citation:

Buranajaroenkij, Duanghathai. 2019. "The Negotiation of Women in Conflict Situations in the Deep South of Thailand." Social Science Asia 5 (3): 67-80.

Author: Duanghathai Buranajaroenkij

Abstract:

The violent conflict in the southern border provinces of Thailand has pushed women into the public sphere, either of necessity or voluntarily. However, women are not merely victims of conflict and violence but attempt to mitigate violence and resolve conflict in their communities. They are determined not only to protect their immediate families but also their society as a whole. The research question that motivates this study is what are the facilitating factors that enable women who live in conflict-prone areas to advance gender demands to engage with the peace process and to redress gender inequality although they do not have the authoritative power. This study draws on existing literature and in-depth interviews of 15 women peace activists and two male social activists. This study finds four facilitating factors that enable women to intervene in conflict and redress gender inequality: self-mobilization and visibility; knowledge and skills; outside influences; and the ability to strategize gender issues. Given limitations in power and the minor roles that women have on formal peacebuilding and political platforms, these assets make it possible for women’s groups to leverage social change toward gender equality. 

Keywords: gender, negotiation, peacebuilding, justice, Thailand

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Peace Processes Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Thailand

Year: 2019

Religious Discourse and Gender Security in Southern Thailand

Citation:

Marddent, Amporn. 2019. "Religious Discourse and Gender Security in Southern Thailand." Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies 12 (2): 225-47.

Author: Amporn Marddent

Abstract:

This article describes the complexity of applying human security through the notion of gender equality in southern Thailand where violent conflict has been prevalent for nearly half a century in a Malay-Muslim dominated society. It explores how the concepts of gender and security have been interpreted in Malay-Muslim leaders’ outlooks. To define security more broadly, the article surveys the various notions of peacebuilding dealing with comprehensive human security and any security threat, thus not limited to state of war or physical violence only. In the prolonged armed violence and conflict, like that faced in Thailand’s Deep South, women’s security and their role in peacebuilding emerge as pertinent concerns. The discontinuities within the narratives of women and security highlight a divergence connected to personal-political imaginations of conflict whereby subtle variations in violent conflict can be seen as the products of different policy prescriptions, local cultural norms, and the project outcomes of women groups supported by governmental organizations and national and international donors. Thus, in order to reflect upon how contemporary security notions are framed, gendered security perceptions ought to be considered as they signify the exercise of peacebuilding programs in the local context. Persistent advocacy of gender equality is about cultural change, which eventually becomes a modality for non-violent society.

Keywords: Cultural Change, Deep South of Thailand, gender security, Malay-Muslim Women, peacebuilding

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Organizations, Peacebuilding, Religion, Security, Human Security, Violence Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Thailand

Year: 2019

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