Human Resources Development Section

Promoting Gender Equality

Interview: Dr. Suteera Thomson

The human resources development of women in terms of educational, health and employments status, lags behind men in all countries of the Asia-Pacific region. Here we spoke with Dr. Suteera Thomson, President of the Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women (APSW) and Advisor for the Gender and Development Research Institute (GDRI), APSW’s research arm, about the experience of GDRI in promoting gender equality in Thailand.

What kind of bias currently exists for women in laws and policies, and what is being done to eradicate such bias?

It is important to provide the government with statistics and information, on which they can base their policies. For example, we noticed that fewer and fewer women were working as farmers. This of course prompted us to wonder where the women went. We followed the women, and realized that they migrated often to Bangkok. They then went to work in the commerce or service sectors. Indeed there are more women in these sectors than men. In the major export industries and tourism, 80% of the workers are women. The total income from the top earning export industries added on to the revenue of tourism, was very close to the national budget for the fiscal year 1991-1993. This information was then used to encourage policy changes for the improvement of the status of women workers. In particular, through a campaign jointly with women’s unions, we were successful in increasing women workers’ maternity leave from 30 to 90 days.

How can women become more mainstreamed into political participation processes?

Women in Thailand are active in economic and social development, however the weakest point is in political participation. There are many biases against women in laws and policies. For Thailand to become a real democratic country, political parties must listen to their membership base, not only the top level. Female voters must learn to ask their politicians what they are going to do for them. A few years ago, 18 organizations got together and decided to focus on three areas of government policy - to end discrimination against women, to support women workers, and to promote changes in the sex industry, in particular to eradicate child prostitution. We organized a big meeting and invited the leaders of political parties. Women from around the country came, and posed questions to the candidates which they could not answer. The Gender Watch Group was thus formed to monitor the government in these three areas of policy. Since then, for each election we have held meetings, and tried to hold candidates accountable for their actions. This is an important way to monitor government progress and raise awareness for gender equality.

Women must also be encouraged to run for office. For example, in Thailand when the government announced the new decentralization policy, we saw this as a good opportunity to push for more women leaders. A network of organizations and universities joined together. GDRI selected four provinces to work in, and asked the governors to assist in identifying female candidates interested in running for office. Meetings were held to encourage women to run, and training workshops were held for women who had decided to run for office. Many women became interested in participating in local elections. 126 women decided to run for the sub-district election, 64 of whom were elected.

As we head toward the millennium, what forces do you see as best in promoting gender equality?

There must be grassroots involvement to achieve gender equality. One example is promoting women’s rights in the new Thai constitution. GDRI ran a campaign to amend the constitution to read “Men and Women have equal rights...” in addition to the existing clause “Persons are equal before the law...”. The campaign involved pamphlets, signatures, meetings, and postcards. However, after one year of the campaign we realized that we only had 96 MPs signed on, while 316 supporting votes were needed. So, we decided to involve the local villages more. Pamphlets explaining the proposed constitutional amendment were published and distributed to raise awareness, and a post-card writing campaign was launched through the Gender Watch Group. Grassroots women leaders organized the sending of post-cards to MPs and senators to vote for the amendment.

This was by far the decisive factor in the success of the campaign. When asked what was the main factor in their decision, many MPs replied that, based on the postcards, they knew they would not be re-elected if they did not support the amendment.

Action at the community level must be promoted and fostered. Our new constitution stresses public participation, transparency and accountability -- all key parts of good governance. The way to practice this good governance is through local level activity.