Organizer: The East-West Center

Description:

It has become a truism that women in Southeast Asia have traditionally enjoyed a relatively favorable position in relation to men in the region. Thirty years of innovative research has opened up new ways of thinking about the variety of female experiences in these diverse cultures and how they differ from the experiences of men. During the same period, research has demonstrated that the indigenous “gender spectrum” acknowledged and embraced male-female unity as manifested in the bodies of ritual specialists, and that the position of such individuals was downgraded with the spread of world religions.

This presentation will examine how these research findings enrich our understanding of the ways gender has been expressed in Southeast Asia, and look forward to some areas, including studies of masculinity, that are well-positioned for further research.

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