Thailand

Due to deindustrialization, globalization, and emerging transnational networks, women in Thailand have experienced recent shifts in identity, as well as altered relations to family and work in the public sphere. In particular, the feminization of migration (both internal and external) has had an enormous impact on the social position of women in Thai society. Migratory transformations have primarily occurred in informal sectors, such as domestic labor, the sex industry, factory labor, and other forms of informal labor such as the selling of food and clothing, and have increased women's autonomy by fostering their participation in waged work.

Although male migrants from China and their Sino-Thai children are often credited with Thailand's increased economic development, Ara Wilson has shown that women constitute the backbone of a vast range of global-local marketplaces and Thai industries. Thai women share a considerable amount of power in business and in politics, however, they are disadvantaged relative to Thai men. For example, although women secured equal voting rights in 1933 and 300,000 more women than men voted in 1995, women nonetheless make up only a small percentage of Thailand's elected officials. And although women's participation in village councils has increased in the 21st century, women's overall participation and inclusion remains low relative to men's.

Given Thailand's accession to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and ratification of the 1975 International Labour Organization's Convention on Equality of Opportunity for Women Workers, Thai women are somewhat protected by labor laws, particularly in the case of maternity leave and equal pay for men and women. However, employers of unskilled or semiskilled laborers frequently ignore or circumvent these requirements. Further, employers’ tendency to construct women as well suited to menial tasks also creates a system in which women have less access to high-skilled, higher-paying positions in a range of industries.

Sex Workers and Mainstream Concerns

Transcript

• Thai Buddhist monks on their morning alms round. For more than a millennia, millions of monks in Thailand’s Theravada Buddhist tradition have carried out this morning ritual. But these are the first Thai women to don the saffron robe. The tradition of female monks, known as Bhikkhunis, never reached the kingdom, and these women faced open hostility when they tried to be ordained.
• I really afraid of fighting against from the society. So everybody, when we are talking about ordaining as a Bhikkhuni they always say, ‘No, we don’t have Bhikkhunis in Thailand’.
• The rift in Thailand is very different from recent ordination battles in the West, as women seek a greater role in the Christian church. Experts say an all male order is clearly in breach of what the Buddha himself intended.
• I mean, the Buddha himself accepted that, whether it’s a male or a female, both have a, you know, capacity to be enlightened. And not only that, the Buddha’s step-mother was ordained, and under her there were 2,500 – some huge number – of female monks.
• And that’s the way it will be once more if this woman gets her way. Dhammananda Bhikkhuni founded this temple after being ordained in Sri Lanka in 2001, despite cries from male monks at home that she was being disrespectful to the faith.
• To be, to revive something that was established by the Buddha is to pay respect to the Buddha.
• In the local community at least, hostility and skepticism have turned to widespread acceptance.
• In my heart, I’ve changed the way I feel. I now respect all monks; I think that they are all the same.
• There are still only a total of seven women monks in Thailand, but many novices, like these women in white, now come to experience the life of a monk for a few days or weeks. And more are beginning to stay on, crossing the bridge to the monastic life so long forbidden to their gender.

The country's sex industry has been at the center of contentious debates originating both within and [Page 1450]outside of Thailand, in which sex workers are positioned as either exploited victims or as agents who rationally and freely choose their work. Recently, however, numerous scholars have complicated this dichotomy, noting the larger systemic and global dynamics that impact and are impacted by Thai sex workers. In fact, sex tourism, often credited for the spike in prostitution in Thailand, makes up a relatively small portion of the larger Thai sex industry. Although Thailand has a global reputation for sexual labor, the majority of Thai women have no connection whatsoever to this industry. Often stigmatized and characterized as transmitters of human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), women who do work in Thailand's sex industry have nonetheless benefitted from increased access to free condoms and clients’ compliance with condom use.

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