Changing Gender Relations in Thailand: A Historical and Cultural Analysis

Abstract

In response to the stereotyping of Thai women in the media as either modern businesswomen or victims of male oppression, this article studies the changing gender roles and status of women in Thailand to identify the various roles played by Thai women and the ways these roles are linked to key cultural, economic, and political mechanisms in Thai society. After an introduction, the first section of the paper analyzes pre-modern Thai history from the mid-13th century with a look at the traditional social, political, and economic structure of feudal society to determine how women's status was affected by Thai Buddhism, absolute monarchy (the affect of the legal system on upper-class women), and matrifocal kinship (the effect of subsistence agriculture on lower-class women). This section also compares the historic status of upper- and lower-class Thai women. The second section of the article considers the effects of 1) the encroachment of Western colonialism in Southeast Asia during the period 1850-1925 and attendant criticisms of polygamy, 2) the post-1932 revolution that resulted in a constitutional monarchy, and 3) the post 1950s period of economic nationalism that has resulted in globalization. The article concludes that lower-class women have certain rights under the feudal system (before 1932) but were forced into certain roles by economic necessity and motherhood. Upper-class women enjoyed high status, but all women were victims of the Buddhist patriarchy and hierarchical systems. Western modernization caused a decline in polygamy and new opportunities for educated women but the status of Thai women has not changed substantially, and class-specific forms of female oppression continues unabated making lower-class women vulnerable to sexual exploitation.

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