'Comparison of the lives of American, Chinese and Thai women\r'

'Re cent decades look at witnessed enormous and far-reaching demographic pitchs in the lives of Ameri burn down, Chinese and Tai wo hands. These changes touch al more or slight every aspect of animateness-time -education, matrimony, divorce, utilization, knowledgeable conduct, childbearing, and living arrangements. In fact, it is difficult to distract the medias persistent mess durations regarding the freshly muliebrity.We know that women atomic spot 18 ingress higher(prenominal) levels of education in unprecedented topics, hand away into professions traditionally taciturn for men, delaying marriage and remaining stinting consumption after they ar married as headspring as after their first-year child is born, divorcing at higher rates, and heading a greater number of kinsfolks. It is not surprising to find these changes the subject of intense l nominate by mixer scientists, politymakers, market rese bowkn others, as well as the media. From the perspective of the psyche woman, the institution of a family through marriage is a study correctt.It changes her dealinghip to the family from which she came and provides her with a new set of roles, responsibilities, commitments, and expectations. It is a of import transition in the life lean, one and exactly(a) that has historically marked the entry into adulthood. The married behavior of American women has significantly changed in recent decades, and this change has signaled a shift in the relationship of single(a) women to the family as a mixer institution and in the way women organize their lives.To find with, changes in matrimonial behavior since the 1950s point to a significant decline in the importance of marriage in the lives of American women. This decline is being met with a prink in the importance of the primary individual. More women be expected to remain single throughout their lives, those who do marry are marrying later, and marriages are more believably to end in divorce. Consequently, women are spending a smaller proportion of their lives married. Delayed marriage is colligate to the increasing poetry of young women living alone.However, the volume of Chinese women, countrified and urban, it is soundless deep down the consideration of the family and in their performance of familial roles that they are judged. A fine shapeer who neglects her husband and beats her children is a bad woman. A fine hiter who neglects his married woman and beats his children is a fine plumper. There maintain been major changes in the family in urban chinaware. It is nearly certainly not the buffer (or barrier) it once was between women and the state, but it cadaver the unit of consumption, the primary condole with unit for the vague, ill, or elderly, and its proper functioning is still seen as womens responsibility.Here again, the rural family reflects the vast differences in China between city and countryside. Although it is no longer the al one unit of exertion, that function in 1981 being per centumd with the production team, it still provides much of the familys resources, and much of that production is womens responsibility (Ebrey 1990). More importantly, change surface though the rural family is now a setting from which women of certain ages go out for varying periods of time to interact with the work world of men, it is still the natural habitat of women. Tai Family Law within the Civil Code contains some(prenominal) outright discriminatory items.For example, if a woman prosecute to be married has cozy relations with a man other than her fiance, her fiance is entitled to extirpate the engagement and seek compensation from the third party. An occupied woman does not wee-wee reciprocal rights. Similarly, if a spouse seeks a judicial divorce (as remote to a divorce based on vulgar consent), the husband is able to divorce his wife on the grounds of adultery but the wife cannot use this intellectual agains t her husband without proof that the husband has hold and honored the ‘other woman as his wife ( NCWA 1995).Currently the marriage registration system affords women no protection from bigamous husbands, and neither do they provide women with protection against evokeual abuse, sexual harassment, rape or domestic force-outfulness (NCWA 1995). Domestic violence (especially wife beating) is major family trouble in Siamese society but it clay under inform be come of the social stigma attached to the victims and the perpetrators. One study on Status of Women and Fertility in Tailand conducted in 1993 interviewed 2800 women and found that one-fifth (approximately 600 women) reported having been beaten by their husbands.The highest concentration of women who had experienced domestic violence was in capital of Siameseland. About 13 per cent of Bangkok women reported being beaten regularly and 47 per cent of these remained in the relationship within a groveling role, neither r etaliating nor leaving (Chayovan et al. 1995). Traditionally Thai impost claim discouraged marriage at a young age and the impact of urbanization and socio- economic discipline stick out reinforced this tendency leading to an addition in marriage age among Thais (Limanonda 1992).The last tetrad census figures indicate that the age at first marriage for women has risen from 21. 6 in 1960 to 23. 5 in 1990. Nonetheless marriage is still the all overwhelm choice with only a small number of Thais remaining single by the age of 50 (Limanonda 1992). The divorce rate is increasing especially in Bangkok where remarriage among younger divorcees is quite high. This increase in the marriage dissolution rate has resulted in a growing number of fe young-begetting(prenominal) heads-of-households. From the 1994 Household Survey, out of the total 15. 8 million households counted, 3.2 million households (about 20. 1 per cent) were headed by women and these households had an average of 3. 2 fa mily members. The average age of these women heads was 51 years old. The low levels of education and income overabundant among these single female heads of-households signifies a considerable magnetic core for the women involved since they would most likely be the major provider of the economic and emotional needs of their household members. Chinese and American attitudes toward men and women differ even in perspectives in which sexual attraction theoretically should give birth no importance.Many American women today share in the public life of the nation. A volume of them puddle gone to school with men, worked in the alike(p) offices with them, shared identical or similar interests with them, and extradite even fought them on broad social, political, and economic issues. American women can count among their ranks doctors, lawyers, high government officials, professors, industrial and commercial executives as well as laborers, police, clerks, and members of the fortify ser vicings. One hundred years after the Opium contend only a small minority of Chinese women enjoyed comparable distinctions.They also could name among themselves workers in motley professions and occupations, no less than crusaders against social evils deeply imbed in Chinese tradition, but these few women towered in a higher place the illiterate majority who either did not escort about the privileged ones or looked upon them with idle curiosity. The reason for this lack of confidence is, however, not so obscure. To begin with, it is connected with the fact that umpteen American women who work outside the home experience defensive. This is one arc of a vicious circle, for the more defensive women feel, the less confidence men impart have in them.Why do educated American women who have had long experience in a mans world feel more defensive than their educated Chinese sisters who have but recently obtained equality and are only a small minority? The answer again lies in the un derlying psychological patterns of the two groups. In the American individual-centered pattern of thought, sex, being diffused, appears whenever men and women meet. The boundaries shaping when sex does or does not apply are simply not gather. Sexual attraction occurs without germ to time, role, and place.In the Chinese pattern, sex, being relegated to particular areas of life, does not perforate every aspect of life. Therefore, the Chinese male will react very contrastively to a take girl and to a woman professor. In the akin way, the Chinese female will view different males from the standpoint of their diverse stations in life. To chuck it more plainly, for Americans, sex differences tend to overshadow situation. For Chinese, situation tends to overshadow sex. An American woman is always prepared to use her womanly charms whether her business is with a hive away clerk, her landlord, or her husband.She is likely to be pleased by any sign that her apricot is appreciated, wh ether the complimentary pronounce or glance comes from a bus conductor, her pupils, or a business associate. Even a ripe Chinese woman is sure to bring dismay upon herself if she copies her American sisters in this respect. For in her culture, female charms and beauty are sexual matters, and should therefore be reserved for a womans lover or husband, or at least for a man whom she might marry. On the other hand, the American woman is, in male eyes, never separated from the qualities of her sex, even if her work has no connection with them.She feels defensive because the male resents her intrusion into what he considers his world, and he is resentful because she brings with her the advantage of her sex in addition to her professional abilities. The Chinese womans sexual attractions go bad to her husband or fiance alone. She can safely invoke them only in the privacy of her marital situation. But for this very reason, once she has achieved a new occupational or professional milit ary position, the Chinese woman tends to be judged in male eyes by her ability and not by her sex.With sex hold in to the particular proposition areas of marriage or prostitution, working females have no need to be defensive when get into into traditionally male activities, and males have no cause to view them as transgressors. A socially desexed female is just as good as a socially desexed male. The system of resolving sexual criminality may come to a standstill in the case of transgression that crosses ethnic boundaries. We have seen that sexual morality is embedded in the communal social order primarily of the womans community.Matters are settled within the community, or between Karen communities with shared understanding of the processes for amending the breach. What happens, consequently, when a breach takes place with those for whom such sanctions are nonmeaningful? The cooling ritual and subsequent marriage cannot be enforced. From a comparative perspective women in Thai land have suffered less discrimination than women in China. Indeed, gender relations in three Thai Kingdoms of Sukhothai, Ayudhaya, and Ratanakosin provided a substantiating template for the inscribing of a better status for women in the twentieth century.Even in this context the improvement in the status of women since the 1970s has been dramatic. Womens activities have expanded in all spheres as a result of the economic growth of the nation and the accompanying social policy initiatives of successive governments, academic institutions and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). Religious practice has back up the participation of women in worship. In Thai Buddhism a child should aim to gain spiritual virtue for his/her parents in order to demonstrate gratitude to the parents for giving life to the child.Sons can perform this act of filial gratitude by joining monasteries and becoming monks. This avenue is not overspread to women but the exclusion of women does not imply that men have superior status to women. Daughters have other mechanisms for repaying debts of gratitude to parents that are equally as validâ€they are simply different from those of sons. There is a clear shift in the record of womens participation in the national economy since the 1970s. Women have joined the wage-labor force in greater numbers than ever in the first place with the expansion in jobs outside of the dominant plain sector.Traditionally agriculture was the main focus of economic practise for Thais and women were an integral part of the agri cultural labor force. Women pass waterd a considerable proportion of family and national income from their agricultural activities and contend significant roles in marketing and selling the family produce and controlling the family finances (Chayovan et al. 1995). The rapid industrialization of the Thai economy over the past two decades linked with the globalization of the international labor market have combined to generate large numbers of Thai women migrating from their homes to other centers for employment (Mills 1999).Women comprised the majority of those entering the Bangkok metropolitan area as the opportunities in the service and industrial sectors expanded. Women were preferred employees for the new jobs such as clothing and shoe manufacturing, the sorting of transistors, the assembly of hammock calculators and the handling of microchips for computer components. Thai government planners nock that in four out of seven geographic regions the net migration of the female population has been consistently higher than that of men since 1980. They predict that this trend will hold on until 2010 (NESDB 1992).The majority of these female migrants move into the large urban centers, have no skills or training, many another(prenominal) have little or no knowledge of city-life and even fewer have a network for social and moral support at their destinations. The economic downturn since 1997 has also demonstrat ed that unskilled women workers remain the most disposable workers. They are a lot the first lay off and few have access to fault or redundancy payments. Many of these women are single-parents or heads-of-households with a group of parents or children depending on their wage.The social security measure system in Thailand is currently too calorie-free to provide support for these women and their families. task laws that guarantee severance pay or workers compensation need to be introduced across all sectors of the economy to ensure that these, the most vulnerable of Thailands industrial workers, are protected. In sum, employment for women in Thailand remains concentrated in the unskilled, or semi-skilled sectors and also in the informal agricultural sectors. Thai women have made considerable progress in the last thirty years.This results from Thailands comparatively equitable cultural traditions as well as the rapid economic development of the nation since the 1970s. However, c ertain groups of women remain at a severe disadvantage compared to men and so their potential to contribute to national development is often ignored or overlooked. The proceed existence of these weak points, given Thailands favorable economic and cultural context, suggests that many opportunities for improving the status of Thai women have been missed.As greater numbers of women enter the administrative and political realms and with the continued support of international bodies like the UN, fewer opportunities should be missed in the future. At home, prostitution remains a long-term, growing and unsolved problem. Economic inclemency remains the predominant reason for women to enter the sex industry. Lack of education combines with diminishing economic opportunities to micturate considerable incentives for women to become prostitutes (Cook 1998). Others are forced or lured into the profession by unscrupulous middle-men.Leaving their homes on the guess that they will be working i n factories, many girls find themselves tricked into prostitution instead. Some of the women traveling oversea do so illegally but the income they earn is generally sent home to support parents and siblings in desperate need. Needless to say the majority of these sex-workers work in adverse life-threatening circumstances. The illegal nature of the industry makes it very difficult to monitor numbers of women involved and the conditions under which they work.The work describes in full point a number of important changes in the fife course of American, Chinese and Thai women. The descriptions of behavioral change are arranged in a series of specific demographic topics †educational attainment, marriage rates, fertility, etc. †and then supplemented with an analysis of womens attitudes over the last twenty years. all told of these changes point to a rise in the primacy of the individual woman that is paralleled by a decline in marriage and the family.In general, these demograp hic changes have been driven by economic, technological, and cultural developments that have permitted women greater control over their lives. This new control is reflected in complex life-course changes that can be roughly summarized as a operation away from the orderly progression of the 1950s (student, then jobholder, then wife, then mother) to participation in several(prenominal) roles simultaneously. Works Cited Chayovan, Napaporn, Malinee Wongsith, Vipan Prachuabmoh Ruffolo. â€Å"A study on status of women and fertility in Thailand,” IPS Publication No.229/95 (May), embed of macrocosm Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 1995. Cook, Nerida. â€Å"Dutiful daughters”, estranged sisters: women in Thailand,” sexual practice and Power in Affluent Asia, eds K. Sen and M. Stivens, Routledge, London, 1998. Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. â€Å"Women, Marriage, and the Family in Chinese History,” in The Heritage of China, ed. Paul Ropp. Berkeley: Univers ity of atomic number 20 Press, 1990. Limanonda, Bhassorn. â€Å"Nuptiality patterns in Thailand: their implications for further fertility decline,” Fertility Transitions, Family Structure, and Population Policy, ed.Calvin Goldscheider, Westview, Boulder, 1992. Mills, Mary Beth. Thai Women in the Global Labor Force: Consuming desires, contested selves, Rutgers University Press, Piscataway, 1999. National delegacy on Womens Affairs (NCWA). Womens Development in Thailand. A report prepared by the National committee for International Cooperation for the World Conference of the United Nations decennary for Women, Nairobi, Kenya (15-26 July), n. p. , Bangkok, 1995. National Economic and Social Development get along with (NESDB). Population Projections for Thailand 1980-2015, NESDB, Bangkok, 1992.\r\n'