MATILDA GABRIELPILLAI traces the ups and downs of Singapore women’s movement. This article is an edited excerpt of her chapter in the book, Why Not? Thinking About Singapore’s Tomorrow, newly published by World Scientific.
As a graduate student in Vancouver, I encountered the writings of Hélène Cixous, who theorized that culture was intricately bound up with sexuality and gender roles. I also ran into the feminist “politics of difference” where South Asian, African American and Chicana ‘women of colour’ rejected the feminism of ‘white women’, stating that their oppression was multi-layered, given their subjection to both ethnic patriarchal and European colonial cultures.
I came back to Singapore with a stronger sense of my female identity and the intricate binding of European, South Asian and South-east Asian histories in that gendered identity. I assumed that I would find a niche in the local women’s movement. As a woman of an ethnic minority who had experienced racism, I was especially interested in linking up with South Asian women and sharing histories of discrimination and denigration of our sexuality on television, in the newspapers, at school, and at work.
But I met with a kind of silence. There were no Women’s Studies departments in the local universities. I had a difficult time merely trying to teach my ‘women’s writing’ course for more than a few years, despite its popularity with students. I was lucky to meet some of the local women’s movement, and admired much of their achievements. But they were not much interested in the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality. If feminists abroad were fiery and confrontational, these women were working with those in power, negotiating with government, collaborating with them, and often letting men take the credit for their work.
Some committee members of the Singapore Council of Women, 1957. Their lobbying led to the passage of the Singapore’s Women’s Charter. Shirin Fozdar, Secretary-General between 1952 and 1961, is seated 2nd from the right. [Photo: Voices & Choices: The Women’s Movement in Singapore]
This was perplexing to anyone familiar with the dramatic start of the Singapore women’s movement. From the early 1950s, the Singapore Council of Women, led by Shirin Fozdar, had lobbied the British Governor and other officials, the Labour Front government, and opposition parties like the PAP as well as Chinese associations to end polygamy and to pass laws to guarantee women’s rights to property. These big demands meant taking a giant axe to the heart of Chinese patriarchal culture where female sexual oppression and material fortunes became intertwined with male privilege. Women were politically active, winning seats in the Legislative Assembly and even starting a women’s wing in the PAP. The PAP as a leftist opposition party, with feminist firebrands like Chan Choy Siong in its midst, was much more ready for women’s rights than other parties were. Sure enough, women’s rights became a central plank of the PAP in its 1959 election manifesto as it courted this important section of the population. The rest, as they say, is history. Singapore’s Women’s Charter was passed even before the nation gained independence.
That spectacular start would fizzle out. The PAP’s feminist MPs largely defected to Barisan Socialis in 1961. There were no women in Parliament from 1970 to 1984 because the PAP did not field any female candidates. Women from the opposition parties did not win seats. Educated and with a role to play in Singapore’s industrialization programme, local women entered the workforce in huge numbers. It took time for women to realise that modernity had its own patriarchal perils, that their bodies could be oppressed in new ways: they would have to do double duty as daytime office workers and sunset homemakers, and their sexual reproduction would be curtailed to fit national prerogatives. In 1983 came the culmination of state interference in women’s reproductive rights, when the government embarked on a discriminatory policy of encouraging university-educated women to have three or more children while less-educated women were to ‘stop at two’. AWARE was formed in 1985 out of anger that women were being blamed for falling fertility rates and with a mission of improving the social and legal status of Singapore women.
However, despite new theories and schools of feminism developing in other countries, for many years Singapore women remained tied to a liberal style, second wave, mainstream feminism that wouldn’t go much beyond fighting for equal rights. Authoritarian governance no doubt explained some of this. But we can, I think, further identify a role for censorship, a politics of language.
Feminists have long recognised the importance of language to gender as a construct. Works such as Robin Lakoff’s Language and Woman’s Place (1975) and Dale Spender’s Man-Made Language (1980)begun by exploring how sexist attitudes in society can be traced to the connotations and denotations of seemingly innocuous words that put women down and elevated men’s qualities. Language is intrinsic to the way society denies women authority and legitimacy as human beings. It is also the means by which women can dream themselves anew, inventing new words and self-myths when they have to.
Aline Wong, together with Dixie Tan and Yu-Foo Yee Shoon, entered Parliament in 1984, ending a 14-year spell when men monopolised the House. [Photo: Ministry of Information]
Given this, feminists have since the 1980s made it a project to ‘disappear’ sexist words and to coin gender-empowering new words. Today, many teens grow up not hearing the word “spinster”, representing unmarried women as ‘defective.’ This has corresponded with a decreasing stigmatisation of women’s choice to be single. On the other hand, the promotion of the word “herstory” as female-gendered history has raised awareness that mainstream “history” is largely a male perspective of the past and tells of men’s lives, boosting scholarship about women’s roles in the past and spurring feminist critical perspectives of dominant historical narratives. Words have conceptual significance, determining the parameters by which objects and events can be understood or analysed. Given all this, is it possible to consider that the women’s movement in Singapore was hamstrung in the last two decades of the 20th century by a ‘censorship of the letter,’ by explicit or implicit taboos placed on certain words significant for the women’s struggle, words such as “politics”, and “patriarchal culture” and “feminism” itself?
There is in Singapore a sense that certain words have to be unspoken. The fight for minority rights has to take place without uttering “racism”, which is in bad taste and immediately renders your discrimination claim illegitimate. Similarly women activists had to practice linguistic caution to be heard. As Lenore Lyons notes (“Believing in Equality,” 1999) all associations in Singapore have to include language in their Constitution that commits them to “not indulge in any political activity.” The word “political” is very elastic—although it may directly forbid associations from aligning themselves with a political party, it can also mean that associations should not challenge government policies or perspectives, even verbally. As Chua Beng Huat observes, such a position would mean that women’s organisations can only demand changes that are “reformist in character,” i.e. simply tweaking or improving existing government policies and practices (Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore, 1995, 208).
“Patriarchy” or “patriarchal culture” may be simply understood as anthropological descriptors of families or clans that are controlled by the father, eldest male or male group in society, where men are the only ones who inherit and possess property. In traditional societies, men also commanded sexual power in the family with multiple wives and concubines. Given that polygamy is outlawed in Singapore civil law, that women can inherit and own property and share control of the dual-income home with men, it would seem that the days of ‘patriarchal culture’ are over.
But for feminist writers from the 1970s and 1980s, the words “patriarchy” and “patriarchal culture” are analytical concepts that point to the institutionalisation of sexism in laws and culture. For some feminist theorists, social structures such as the family, laws, the political system and religion organise society and permit men to subjugate and exploit women and girls. For others, gender roles and duties are patriarchal ideologies that justify gender domination by reference to nature or divine command. Simone de Beauvoir underlined the significance of socialisation to ‘constructing’ gendered identity when she said that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”.
Feminist history linked the emergence of patriarchal culture in the second millennium BC to sexual control of women, when women, who had been important to the maintenance of human communities, could now only gain status and privilege by limiting their child-bearing capacity to one man. “Patriarchal culture” became an even more important analytical concept when socialist theorists linked male power motives to the emergence and development of capitalism, when men directed the household production of goods in a gender-biased manner, made themselves the head of households and rendered property inheritable by gender. Feminists saw in modern capitalistic culture’s social stratification, hierarchical polities, institutionalised violence, and ego-driven individualism forces that structured the oppression of women in society. Not only families but states were viewed as ‘heteropatriarchal’, leaning on each other to maintain male power. Now cultural change was seen to be even more germane to female equality and emancipation: Sara Ruddick, for example, queried who would be a ‘good mother’: the one who raised sons to be competitive, individualistic and comfortable with hierarchies, or the one who socialised sons to be cooperative and communalistic.
By forbidding the use of ‘patriarchy’, Singapore men could keep women from ripping off the veil of gender domination, from questioning why gender roles had to be just so, why women had to conduct themselves in ‘modesty’ and demonstrate ‘sexual virtue’ while men did not. The word made visible a man-made system of beliefs that existed to keep men in power and control. If you don’t speak that word, male domination could appear to be a phenomenon entirely dictated by nature.
At his National Day Rally in 1983, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew sparked what came to be known as the Great Marriage Debate when he voiced his concern that graduate women were taking too long to settle down and produce babies. [Photo: Ministry of Information and the Arts]
The Singapore government did not as such issue a diktat that the word “patriarchy” was not to be used. But the cultural climate of the 1980s and the 1990s was definitely the wrong time for local feminists to champion the critical examination of our inherited and different Asian patriarchal cultures. They would have been accused of a cultural betrayal, of using a Western discourse (of feminism) to hack at their own ancestral culture. The national microphone was exclusively in the hands of a powerful male elite, who spoke a language that made the masculinity of the state invisible even while it highlighted the female gender of working mothers.
In 1975, then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew said, “Our primary concern is to ensure that, whilst all our women become equal to men in education, getting employment and promotions, the family framework in bringing up the next generation does not suffer as a result of high divorce rates, or, equally damaging, neglect of the children, with both parents working.” He would repeat that message in 1983, saying, “Equal employment opportunities, yes, but we shouldn’t get our women into jobs where they cannot, at the same time, be mothers. You just can’t be doing a full-time heavy job like that of doctor or engineer and run a home and bring up children.”
The subtexts here? Female gender equality is a choice that the state makes, or a gift it hands out, not an inalienable right for women. The “we” and “our” pronouns in these sentences refer to the supposedly ungendered state, to be distinguished from the “men” and “women” that Lee spoke about. Other subtexts: ‘broken’ families are caused by overly ambitious women who neglect their family responsibilities to focus on career success; only mothers/women can raise children and manage domestic work.
Some women did use the two “p” words, “patriarchy” and “politics”: in academic journals kept separate from mainstream discourse sites such as newspapers and the broadcast media. Women also critiqued our inherited Asian patriarchal cultures, but in disguised metaphoric language and tropes in poetry and fiction.
The theoretical connections between the two ‘p’ words and feminist theory also meant the ‘f’ word, “feminism” had to be erased. The archives of The Straits Times shows that in the 1980s, the word was largely mentioned in relation to developments in the West. In an article “Not Weak and Gentle” from 1985, Evelyn Wong notes that “despite their concerns for women’s rights, many women don’t like the word ‘feminism’.” In addition to fearing a Western discourse that would challenge their Asian cultural values, Singapore women thought the word ‘feminism’ “precluded femininity”: stereotypical images of bra-burning American women who refused to wear make-up substituted for any real understanding of the intellectual content of the women’s movement.
Lenore Lyons has noted that AWARE activists often used the term “feminism” in its internal documents, but refrained from using the word in open public discourse as they feared being “dismissed, not on the quality of their argument but on the negative perceptions of the public.” AWARE instead chose to use “the language of ‘women’s rights’ and ‘gender equality’” (Lyons). In 1995, there would even be an attempt within AWARE to declare itself to be a “feminist” organisation, but those promoting the move lost the vote in an extraordinary general meeting.
AWARE stalwarts celebrate in 2009 after successfully resisting a conservative takeover bid. [Photo: AWARE]
AWARE accomplished a great deal for women’s rights on the strength of fighting for “gender equality”. Nevertheless, its chosen use of language limited the way it could intellectually reach out to women. In a survey of AWARE members’ views that Lyons carried out between 1994 and 1997, there was a strong correlation between AWARE members who did not identify as feminist and those who believed that childcare could never be a substitute for family care, that a woman’s primary duty was to care for her family. These women also rejected the idea that a quota system — rather than one based on ‘merit’ — should be used to usher women into parliament. If they had been exposed to feminist thought, they would have likely questioned any essentialising equation of women with domestic roles, and would have been sceptical that any idea of ‘merit’ upheld by a male-dominated political party in choosing parliamentary candidates could be free of gender bias and patriarchal motives.
The decision to rely on the language of “gender equality” perhaps also made it easier for men in power to perpetually paint women as the weaker ‘unequal’ sex, as victims who need help to be equal. For instance, there was never any adequate explanation for why the ruling party readily accepted some of Dr. Kanwaljit Soin’s 1996 suggestions in Parliament for police to investigate and prosecute family violence, but refused to accept any need for a “family” Act. Instead they imported these amendments into the Women’s Charter, linguistically presenting “family violence” as something that happened to women even if, in reality, men and children were often also targets of domestic abuse.
Similarly, in 2020, the government presented a project to improve ‘gender equality’ in Singapore as one that would focus on “Women’s Development”, where the state would seek to “empower, protect and uplift our women”. This language represents gender equality as something that involves surmounting female weaknesses or ‘backwardness’. Women would be the object, not the agents, of action. If it did not appear ironic that the mover of the quest for female equality was a male Law Minister, that was because ‘gender equality’ is understood by the Singapore male political elite to be the struggle of women seeking to fit themselves into a patriarchal order, not that of challenging it.
Is it a mere coincidence that the moment lauded as a turning point in the Singapore women’s movement is also the first time that the word “feminism” was uttered repeatedly in a mass public gathering?
One afternoon in March 2009, a group of women, trailing supporters, came into AWARE headquarters during its AGM and elected themselves into top positions on the NGO’s executive committee. The group were corporate women who belonged to the same Christian church, and it emerged that they had hijacked AWARE to dismantle its gay-friendly programmes and transform its liberal culture from within. The conflict between the deposed leadership and the usurpers was played out in the media, and led to an EGM in May. On that day, their voices and minds unbridled by the government’s decision to stay out of the fray, Singapore women finally spoke up. In their recollections of the event, it becomes evident that Singapore women ‘experienced’ feminism for the first time that day in an integrated, holistic manner, encountering it as a space of female solidarity and connecting their identity as women to their wider values about social justice and the unjust exercise of power.
The event released new feminist energies. Today, AWARE boldly describes itself as an organisation that advocates for gender equality and women’s rights as “an integral part of human rights” and that it also works with other civil society organisations on “push[ing] for” (not simply “promot[ing]”) democratic governance and institutions, freedom of speech, expression and assembly, and the elimination of all forms of discrimination.
Just as implicit taboos on certain words inhibited the women’s movement in Singapore for a few decades, the licence on language offered by our access to global media is providing daily opportunities now for local women to revision themselves and represent their needs to the nation in powerful new words.
In 2011, in an event marked as starting a new era of grassroots activism in our women’s movement (Corinna Lim, IPS Lecture 1: “Herstory”), two women adapted a transnational movement against rape culture to fit into the confines of Hong Lim Park, the only place where protest is allowed in Singapore. Slutwalk Singapore did not involve long protest marches as in other cities, but it hurled patriarchal language that objectified and denigrated women back at their users. Diana Rahim, editor of the blog ‘beyondhijab.sg,’ also links language to women’s liberation as she speaks of her purpose in providing a platform for Muslim women to share their stories: by telling their stories, the nightmarish reality of women’s lives escapes from the tightly woven illusion of patriarchal perfection spun by the state. “Stories are never just stories. They are the bed upon which the prevailing ideology, the status quo, rests….Stories are powerful things because within each story lies a kind of meaning,” Rahim says.
SlutWalk Singapore, 2011. [Photo: http://msdemeanoursingapore.blogspot.com]
Thankfully too, the censorship of the ‘patriarchal’ word is behind us now. In 2022, as part of the government’s effort to address gender inequality in the nation, Corinna Lim, executive director of AWARE, lectured men about “toxic masculinity,” and pointed to aspects of National Service culture as contributing to sexual violence against women. In another lecture, Lim crashed through the conflictual simplistic maxim that “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” to suggest that social pressures on men to be strong, stoic, brave and aggressive did not just hurt women but they also hurt the men themselves. In addition to National Service, Lim also found an unwitting institutionalisation of gender inequality in the sex education delivered in our schools that did not go beyond preaching abstinence. Her research found that the inadequacy of this led to boys turning to porn as their “default sex educator,” inculcating sexist mental attitudes that led to the ill-treatment of women, including violence.
The government’s White Paper on Singapore Women’s Development indicates that our thinking about gender equality has gone beyond the workplace in addressing equality in the home and in the family. In a long overdue recognition that women play more significant roles in caregiving of children and the elderly, the government is now considering facilities to provide both emotional and financial support to caregivers. With these new provisions, women will find it easier to combine mothering with building a career as they get more access to childcare services and flexible work arrangements. Plans are afoot to make it easier for women to re-enter the workforce after taking a hiatus to raise children.
Government agencies have also been tasked with promoting and enforcing greater representation of women in corporate leadership roles. Billed as a whole-society effort, the Conversations on Singapore Women’s Development that preceded the presentation of the White Paper apparently held 160 conversations with nearly 6,000 Singaporeans. Yet no artists and writers’ groups or media organisations were listed as contributors to discussions. Even though the government sees the need for a “deep mindset change” in undoing gender stereotypes, an action plan to bring about those cultural and social changes in perspectives of gender were not included in its White Paper.
The mindset change should not only be about persuading men to think of women as their equals, but should encourage women to escape from patriarchal ideas about female identity and their place in society. Singapore women need to think about what keeps them from attaining equal self-fulfilment in life as men; they should probe the difference between their desires and needs and those imposed on them by patriarchal culture. We should certainly think about what kind of ‘mothers,’ ‘wives,’ ‘sisters,’ and ‘daughters’ we want to be if we could decide these for ourselves.
Newspapers tend to reproduce the dominant ideas, including patriarchy. [Photo: Cherian George]
How can we re-imagine the meanings of these gender-related words or labels? How do women from various ethnic and socioeconomic groups differentiate their female identity and gender problems from those of women in other social groups? How do we want our female leaders to behave — what values would we like to see them uphold? What changes would we like to see in government, in institutions of learning, in healthcare, or in urban development that would better meet our needs as women? Do we like the way we are portrayed in the media and how would we like society to see us?
Only by thinking about such questions can we even begin to map the ways in which we are unequal to men in our society. But this cannot stop at thinking. The fastest way to mainstream women’s voices and their perspectives would be to assert our presence in the mass media. Newspapers, online or off, remain the leading means by which a city, or a country imagines a coherent identity for itself, setting out the ideas and attitudes it finds acceptable. Unfortunately, newspapers are also where the ruling and business elites establish the dominance of ideas and values that serve their interests, excluding those of less empowered social groups. Like women. The newspaper reproduces norms of masculinity and upholds male power.
Flip through The Straits Times on any given day and you will find that men’s faces and their voices dominate the pages, despite the presence of many female by-lines. Profiles of women and their views only appear in the arts and entertainment section. For The Straits Times, business, politics, education, health and court events are ‘male’ arenas of life, whereas arts and entertainment, and even romances of stars, are ‘female’ arenas. This is shocking, almost primitive.
It is crucial that we expand our notion of gender equality to include the representation of women and the greater inclusion of their voice and perspectives in cultural and intellectual space. Women journalists need to consciously push for changes in content and seek women’s perspectives in various areas of expertise. Women both inside and outside the media, including educators and civil society, need to advocate for a fairer representation of women in all their diversity and call out gender-stereotyping. Our universities too need to equip a new generation of journalists with gender-literacy skills. Words not only reflect reality, they also construct reality. The newspaper is a mirror to society. If society is stubborn about changing, switching up the mirror can bring new realities into being.
— MATILDA GABRIELPILLAI was a journalist with the local media and later an academic in Singapore. She has researched and taught women’s writings and post-colonial literatures. At present she is a freelance writer and tutor of Literature in English. She maintains a Literature Education website www.literaturehelpdesksg.com that provides study resources for students in local and international Literature programmes.
The book, Why Not? Thinking About Singapore’s Tomorrow, is edited by Kanwaljit Soin and Margaret Thomas and pubished by World Scientific. It is available at Kinokuniya, BookBar, and the World Scientific site.