Asia Eur J DOI 10.1007/s10308-013-0342-x O R I G I N A L PA P E R
Gender and transition in Southeast Asia: conceptual travel? Claudia Derichs
Received: 4 September 2012 / Revised: 2 January 2013 / Accepted: 14 January 2013 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract Theories and concepts of political transition have been influenced to a great deal by Western theoretical and conceptual reflection. The parameters of transition are usually based on two assumptions or expectations: The goal of transition is democracy or a democratic system, and both actors and affected persons are perceived as gender-neutral beings, i.e., there is no distinction made between male or female actors and persons concerned. This article problematizes the conventional concept of transition and attempts a gendered conceptualization. Empirically, it draws from studies and fieldwork during the periods of political transition in Indonesia (mostly accomplished) and Malaysia (ongoing). It addresses the impacts of transition on women in particular. The core argument is that conceptual reflections of transition need to integrate a gender-sensitive perspective, but at the same time attend to the fact that “women” is not an exhausting analytical category. As illustrated by the examples of Indonesia and Malaysia, a gender-sensitive approach thus requires to also take the pluralism and heterogeneity of “women” (as well as “men”) into account.
Pitfalls of transition In 2002, Thomas Carothers declared “The End of the Transition Paradigm” and indicated that a change of perspective in the theoretical discussion of pathways to democracy had become necessary (Carothers 2002). He was and is seconded by many fellow scholars who doubt the anticipated direction of political transition (i.e., democratization) and who, meanwhile, prefer to give priority to the label of authoritarianism rather than democracy as the leading theoretical term. The label of authoritarianism has become accompanied by adjectives such as “electoral” (Schedler 2006), “competitive” (Levitsky and Way 2002, 2010), or “monarchical” (Lucas 2004). Since these attempts to find appropriate names for phenomena in the gray zone between different types of C. Derichs (*) Institute of Political Science, Philipps University Marburg, Marburg, Germany e-mail:
[email protected]
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political systems are not yet entirely convincing, Richard Snyder's question still matters to the academic guild: “how to get beyond studying politics through the prism of democracy” (Snyder 2006). Snyder regards this problem as a conceptual challenge for the comparison of political systems. While this is certainly so, I think another challenge merits mentioning, too. It is conceptual, it suffers from path dependency and it applies to 50 % of humankind. The challenge I am referring to is how to get beyond studying transition, democratization, and “reloaded authoritarianisms” (Frankenberger and Albrecht 2010) through a gender-blind prism. I want to reflect on this question in the following paragraphs by taking the Southeast Asian states of Indonesia and Malaysia as cases in point. I will start out by introducing some guidelines for the task of gendering the concept of transition. I continue my reflections with empirical findings from Indonesia and Malaysia which underscore the need for conceptual rethinking. I finish with a suggestion of how to proceed in empirical analyses of transition. The concluding remarks briefly put these findings and suggestions into the broader perspective of area studies and global knowledge production. Since a full-fledged alternative, gendered model for analyzing political transition has not yet been developed, the ideas put forward here may be taken as a vantage point for further research in this direction. What I wish to demonstrate is the need to scrutinize the dominating conceptual perspective and to be cautious in evaluating a country's political transition with a perfunctory gaze at empirical reality.
Gendering concepts To gender conventional concepts such as democracy, governance, participation, representation, development and the like does not mean to simply add the aspect of “gender.” As Amy Mazur and Gary Goertz (2008, p.9) succinctly point out, gendering can have wide-ranging methodological and theoretical influences on concepts. Because the concepts change, case selection can change and the results of previous empirical analyses can easily be called into question. One needs to consider how gender is being inserted and think about the theoretical and methodological consequences of such insertions. This means that well-intentioned elaborations on “democracy and gender” or “transition and gender” are pretty much outdated because they do not insert but merely add the gender perspective to a concept. Insertion, incorporation, and integration require a deeper dissection of concepts; concept construction has to follow a systematic approach. In their seminal work on gendering concepts, Goertz and Mazur developed ten guidelines that should be followed in order to accomplish the task of gendering concepts in a meaningful and substantive way (Goertz and Mazur 2008, pp.14–43). These guidelines refer to & & & & &
The theoretical, historical, cultural, and geographic context of a concept Its ability to travel across temporal and cultural areas Internal and mutual causal relationships of concepts The concept's name and its semantic field Its opposite or negation
Gender and transition in Southeast Asia: conceptual travel?
& & & & &
Its polarizing effect or its admission of gray zones The dimensions that define the concept The necessity of these dimensions (which can be questionable) The interdependence of these dimensions The operationalization of the concept (Goertz and Mazur 2008, p.15)
While it is rather unfeasible to attend to all guidelines equally with regard to one single concept, it is useful to select those guidelines which reveal the most apparent deficits with respect to the incorporation of the gender dimension. The contextual guideline, for instance, may hint at the historical context of the invention of the welfare state as a concept—and reveal that the initial association with this term did not include the dimension of care, which is of great significance nowadays. This in turn, relates to the dimensions guideline in that it points out a dimension (i.e., care) that has to be integrated into the conceptualization of the welfare state (Sainsbury 2008). Concepts which originate from a specific geographical or cultural background may not easily be transferred to other world regions. They cannot simply travel without being adjusted to a different context—if they are able to travel at all. The concept of “imagined communities” (Anderson 1983) drew a lot of insights from Benedict Anderson's former experience in Southeast Asia and Indonesia in particular. The concept traveled across the world. In comparison to Anderson's imagined communities, Esping-Andersen's three types of welfare states are not universally applicable, as Ingrid Wehr (2009) examines for the region of Latin America, to name but one example. Causal relationships within or between concepts refer to the dependent and independent variables of a research design. If the said concept is the dependent variable, then “gendering the dependent variable” means “you almost guarantee that you will have to gender some of the independent variables, [too]” (Goertz and Mazur 2008, p.21). A case in point is the concept of democracy. As Pamela Paxton (2008) substantiates, a lot of countries received the label of democracy in famous rankings (e.g., Polity IV Project 2012) at a certain point in time without having granted women the right to vote. Participation as a core element of a democracy apparently pertained to selected groups of a society; the reference to the idea of universal suffrage excluded women. If participation with regard to sex, class, or race were taken seriously as an independent variable in the evaluation of democracy, the time of achievement of a democratic system and with it the ranking positions would have to change. Thus, if the concept of democracy is gendered, the independent variables of participation and representation have to be gendered, too. For the purpose of this article, it is not necessary to elaborate on each of Goertz' and Mazur's ten guidelines. The examples raised may suffice to demonstrate what the task of gendering means and what it is expected to accomplish. The application of the guidelines to the concept of transition—my endeavor in the present article—is still a blank spot in the field of transition studies. I will therefore set out with the empirical part of the exercise and introduce some selected observations and evidences gathered during (a) Indonesia's widely acclaimed transition period to democracy between 1998 and 2008 and (b) Malaysia's transition of the same decade, which is in comparison to Indonesia considered as a slow and rather bleak process. The selection of these two countries allows for a comparison along the line of a most different system design. Whereas both countries are different in terms of their political systems (parliamentary
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in Malaysia, presidential in Indonesia), their income level,1 their demographic setup, and their size,2 they are the two biggest Muslim majority countries in Southeast Asia and have both undergone a period of social and cultural Islamization that has inevitably led to an increasing political influence of Islamic actors. This common trait renders them a matching pair of countries for a comparison.
Transition in Indonesia and Malaysia Indonesia's transition from dictatorship to democracy is by now widely regarded as fairly successful; the country is ranked as “free.”3 At the same time, Indonesia scholars articulate a certain unease with granting the country this rating. The editors of the compilation Democratization in Post-Suharto Indonesia, for instance, hint at the state's protracted transition from authoritarian to democratic rule (Bünte and Ufen 2008). Others have added an adjective to Indonesia's democracy. Dan Slater (2008, p. 56), for instance, uses the term “electoral democracy,” alluding to the distinction between electoral and liberal democracies. Marcus Mietzner (2009) points to the “low quality” of democracy in Indonesia. Others remind us of the spread of religiously inspired violence in the post-New Order era (Hadiwanata 2006). Indonesia's decentralization in particular has aroused critical views and is often connoted with corruption, predators, vigilantes, zealots, and a general lack of state-controlled security (Beittinger-Lee 2009, pp. 158–207; Hadiz 2010). “Like other multi-ethnic states in transition, Indonesia's post-authoritarian society resembles the well-known Pandora's box suddenly opened. Long-suppressed aspirations, ideologies, religious dogmas, and political agendas finally found ways to be expressed through political parties inside and outside the public realm of civil society,” writes Beittinger-Lee (2009, p.158). She identifies some particularly “bad” manifestations of this process, which can be subsumed under the terms of “militant religious groups,” “violent vigilante groups,” “militant youth groups,” “violence-prone militias,” and “racist/radical ethno-nationalist groups” (Beittinger-Lee 2009, p.159). These groups are mostly male dominated and entertain a remarkable culture of violence. Women in particular suffer from such self-proclaimed law and order forces. Since decentralization efforts have facilitated the implementation of local regulations, numerous districts (daerah) have grasped the opportunity to enact legal institutions and directives which have a strong rooting in Islamic law or shari’a4. Although, as Bob Hadiwanata (2006, p. 117f.) 1
Indonesia is ranked as a lower middle-income country by the World Bank; Malaysia ranks as an upper middle-income country; see http://data.worldbank.org/country/indonesia (Accessed 8 September 2012). 2 Malaysia is composed of over 60 % ethnic Malays, over 30 % ethnic Chinese, a considerable community of ethnic Indians (7 %), and various indigenous groups in East Malaysia. Indonesia's ethnic composition is highly heterogeneous, too, but far less delicate than the “three races” constellation in Malaysia, since the majority of people in Indonesia adheres to the religion of Islam regardless of ethnicity. The population of Indonesia is 242.3 million and that of Malaysia, 28.8 million; see http://data.worldbank.org/country/ indonesia (Accessed 8 September 2012). 3 For the full list of ranking of 2012 see http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/inline_images/ Table%20of%20Independent%20Countries%2C%20FIW%202012%20draft.pdf (Accessed 4 August 2012). 4 The term shari’a is spelled differently according to the authors who use it. In direct citations, I follow the spelling and/or italics version in the original text. My own preferred spelling is shari’a.
Gender and transition in Southeast Asia: conceptual travel?
stresses, “the implementation of syariah was confined to its symbolic usage” because of lacking support from the general public for its full implementation, he hints at an important impact of this trend. “In those [i.e. areas where shari’a regulations were introduced; C.D.], syariah is limited to the obligation of all Muslims (especially women to wear Muslim dress and head-scarf (jilbab)” (Hadiwanata 2006, p. 118). Whereas Hadiwanata suggests playing down the worries about local bylaws or perda in the short version of peraturan daerah, it is apparent that they have a strong impact on the public gender order. Kathryn Robinson (2009, p. 171) thus recalls that “[t]here have been ongoing reports of abuse of women in the guise of enforcing sharia regulations.” Edriana Noerdin (2002) opens her chapter on shari’a bylaws and the marginalization of Indonesian women with a quote from a newspaper that describes how a group of unidentified masked men stopped a bus carrying women workers of PT Wira Lanao. The women were made to get off the bus, and the men cut their hair by force… According to the perpetrators, the women workers were wrong to go out without covering their hair (Noerdin 2002, p. 179). Robinson (2009, p. 173) puts this story into a broader perspective by stating that the Islamized masculinity that asserts control over women through restrictions on dress and movement and through championing male prerogative in the family is used by a (mainly male) political elite pursuing power in the public domain, utilizing a variant on [sic] the ideological frame that expressed the patriarchal authority of the New Order5. The accounts almost speak for themselves. Women who would like to enlarge their freedom in the public and private sphere by wearing what they deem appropriate, enjoying equality in the family, or moving about without a mahram (i.e., a man to whom a woman cannot legally be married) have not gained from political liberalization in the shape of democratization. Rather than gaining from expanded space for participation, new forms of violence directed against (Muslim) women and a continuation of patriarchal authoritarian treatment discourage many of them from engaging in the struggle for women's human rights (see also Schröter 2013). On the balance sheet, transition and democracy have not brought about what many Indonesian women had hoped for: a betterment of their situation and status in terms of gender equality. In an interview tour through Jakarta which I conducted in 2006,6 thus 8 years after the start of transition, activists and staff members of women's organizations vociferated their grievances in several regard. The issue of discriminating perda was articulated quite often. Activists of the Sekar Foundation felt that bills and laws introduced to or passed through parliament during the preceding 5 years “were not so much in favor of women.” The Yudhoyono government (2004 until present) had 5
New Order or orde baru refers to the Suharto years, 1965–1998. The spectrum of organizations included Koalisi Perempuan (Women's Coalition), Yayasan Sekar (Sekar Foundation), Komnas Perempuan (National Commission on Violence against Women), Jurnal Perempuan (Women's Journal), Kalyanamitra (Women's Communication and Information Center), CETRO (Center for Electoral Reform), Women and Gender Studies Center (University of Indonesia), TPGT (Tata Pemerintahan Tanggap Gender or Gender Responsive Public Policy and Administration), Indonesian Center for Women in Politics (ICWIP), Kapal Perempuan (Women's Boat), and LBH-APIK (Legal Aid Society—Indonesian Women's Association for Justice). In addition, individual women in their capacity as members of parliament or the bureaucracy belonged to the sample of interview partners.
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given space to women—as an element of equity-oriented democracy—but at the same time supported fundamentalist views (Yayasan Sekar, Feb. 21, 2006). In 2006, this became particularly evident in the contestation concerning an “anti-pornography bill” (RUU APP). According to this bill, even traditional attire such as the dresses worn by women in Bali could have been sanctioned for looking “pornographic” (see Ottendörfer and Ziegenhain 2008; Rozaki 2010). After years of neglect, the bill suddenly became an urgent matter of parliamentary debate, promoted first and foremost by the Prosperous Justice Party (Parati Keadilan Sejahtera or PKS), which is widely understood as an Islamist party. The bill provoked considerable protest among religious and non-religious women's groups, because women felt being the main targets of the proposed law—leaving the porn industry, the media and the internet untouched (CETRO, Feb. 22, 2006). The bill eventually passed parliament in 2008 in a slightly watered-down version (Sherlock 2010) which conceded a right to adhere to local cultural traditions. The executive director of the “Women's Communication and Information Center”, Kalyanamitra, hinted at the double face of press freedom in the post-New Order period, i.e., after 1998. While the newly won press freedom, including the internet, was certainly a positive achievement of the young democracy, the media were now encroaching on people's life in a much more blatant manner. If women made up their mind at all to report a case of domestic violence or rape to the police, they were discouraged again when they entered the office. “The media are already there waiting for a “good story”. This makes the women a double victim—a victim of her perpetrator and a victim of the media.” (Kalayanamitra, Feb. 17, 2006) Even if the law gives women the right to claim their due, implementation of the law is difficult. Once a woman reports a violation of rights by her husband or a family member, shame is put on her. She is considered a person unable to keep family secrets and loses her standing within the (extended) family. Women thus think twice before they proceed to police or court (Kalyanamitra, Feb. 17, 2006). Moreover, the dilemma-like situation battered women are squeezed into is not detached from the issue of corruption. An example are the “women's help desks,” special units of the police to handle cases of violence against women and children. They have been installed in most provinces by now, yet they do not cover all areas and districts.7 This is an entry point for bribery, since women seeking to report a case to the women's desk in a neighboring district have to get there somehow. The transport is generously offered by the local person in charge, but of course, it costs (Kalyanamitra, Feb. 17, 2006). Most of the representatives of women's organizations blame a patriarchal culture that pervades society for the unfortunate development of women's rights during the transition period. The Domestic Violence Act passed parliament in 2004. It was a long fought for law—Indonesia's Legal Aid Society LBH-APIK had campaigned for it since 1997 (LBH-APIK, Feb. 17, 2006). The enactment was welcome by women's organizations and expected to encourage women to file suit in case of a respective violation of their domestic rights. But implementation of the act turned out to be not as smooth as
7 A number given by Komnas Perempuan is 305 units in the 33 provinces by 2009; see http:// www.komnasperempuan.or.id/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/peluang-dan-tntangan-polri-dlm-tanganikorban-kkrsn-pr.ppt (Oct. 11, 2010).
Gender and transition in Southeast Asia: conceptual travel?
expected. Since battered women are reluctant to report about the violent behavior of family members for reasons of honour and reputation, the law's impact is weak. Organisations such as LBH-APIK cannot wait for cases, but have to go out and find them. If it is too embarrassing for a woman in a community to openly admit her contact to the Legal Aid Society, her case can be handled via another community, via mediators and paralegals (LBH-APIK, Feb. 17, 2006). This is one way to deal with a difficult environment for the implementation of a legal provision. The experience on the local level in particular reveals that newly enacted local regulations do not always conform to the reality on the ground. While the gap between enactment and implementation is certainly an issue that touches legislation and policy making in general, it affects women in a special manner because the impediments to enjoy a newly won right are less of an institutional or structural nature but rather derive from a strongly patriarchal culture. A measure to better the situation for women might be to simply increase women's representation in policy- and decision-making political bodies such as parliament, cabinet, or parties. The Executive Director of the Center for Women in Politics (ICWIP) and “CEDAW champion” Ibu Titi Sumbung, for instance, is quoted as follows: We have the 1945 Constitution, the Human Rights Law, and then CEDAW—all of these provide legal guarantees for men and women to enjoy their civil and political rights. I firmly believe that one of the root causes of persistent discrimination against women, despite all these legal guarantees, is that women continue to be excluded from politics and decision-making. And this has had a negative impact on the entire process of democratization in this country.8 Regarding the criteria for analyzing and evaluating transition, it seems insufficient to look at the legislative effectiveness of parliaments. A crucial question is who is represented in parliament and what does representation entail? Before discussing this issue, the legal and factual situation of women in Malaysia merits a closer look. Malaysia's political transition has not advanced as swiftly as Indonesia's. Malaysia's reform movement of the late 1990s rocked the governing coalition Barisan Nasional (National Front) which sat firmly on a two-thirds majority since the country's independence in 1957. But the government was not toppled as had happened in Indonesia in 1998. The years following the reformasi period, as it is usually referred to, saw the governing parties gaining mileage and winning a landslide victory in the general elections of 2004. The second progressive blow, however, came up in the elections of March 2008 when a coalition of opposition parties managed to win control over five out of 13 states. Barisan Nasional's two-third majority was broken in what became referred to as Malaysia's “political tsunami” (Tan and Lee 2008). Freedom House ranks the country as “partly free,” but not as an “electoral democracy.”9 Judging from the perspective of Malaysia's overall post8
CEDAW is the acronym for the United Nations‘Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (enacted in 1981). The website “CEDAW in action” introduces activists in various countries who have engaged intensively in order to implement, promote and monitor CEDAWconforming policies. Ibu Titi is one of them in Indonesia. She is portrayed and quoted under http://cedawseasia.org/indonesia_stories_ibutiti.html (Accessed January 23, 2013). 9 See http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/inline_images/Table%20of%20Independent% 20Countries%2C%20FIW%202012%20draft.pdf (Accessed 12 August 2012).
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colonial political development, a trend that has apparently gained a lot more momentum than democratization is Islamization—including the politicization of the religion of Islam as well as the Islamization of politics, society, and economy. The following paragraphs discuss what Islamization means for Malaysian (Muslim) women. Women's rights organizations in Malaysia respired when the government announced the appointment of two female shari’a court judges in July 2010. The women judges have the jurisdiction over the same cases as their male colleagues, a fact raising high hopes in terms of a fairer rule in cases such as divorce, child custody, or the appointment of guardians for marriages. The regulation of religious jurisdiction is not a federal, but part of a state's matter, as Marina Mahathir explains. Malaysia's civil laws are under the province of the federal government. But the federal constitution gives its 13 states jurisdiction over two areas: land and laws governing ‘persons professing the Islamic faith,’ which involve family matters such as marriages, divorce, custody and inheritance. Syariah Courts have no jurisdiction over non-Muslims and matters related to Islamic practices are not heard in the civil courts.10 The arrangement means that Islamic judicial affairs—in a country with a Muslim majority of over 60 % of the population—are not dealt with by the federal government.11 While this caters to a certain degree of state autonomy in legislation pertaining to Islamic affairs, it also means that Islamic criminal laws or hudûd can be enacted on a state basis. The northern states of Kelantan and Terengganu did so in 1993 and 2002, respectively. Enforcement of hudûd laws (which can encompass chopping off limbs) has only been put on hold because the federal government decided that such legislation runs contrary to the Constitution.12 While the implementation of hudûd ordinances targets men and women alike, there are a couple of shari’a-based “family laws” which have become increasingly gender discriminating since the mid-1980s. The change occurred in 1984, when the family law of the two federal territories Kuala Lumpur and Labuan13 was suddenly amended: The Islamic Family Law (Federal Territories) Act of 1984, which was designed to serve as a model for the other Malaysian states, was considered internationally to be among the most progressive codified Muslim family laws in terms of rights and protection for women. Since 1984, however, a series of amendments have effectively rescinded many of the positive provisions for women in the original codification.14 The consequence of this move is no surprise. The amendments included various stipulations which eventually rendered Muslim women a disadvantaged sex vis-à-vis “A Step forward in Equal Rights,” report for Qantara.de (2010), http://www.qantara.de/webcom/show_ article.php/_c-478/_nr-1111/i.html (Oct. 12, 2010) 11 Although Islamic jurisdiction is a state affair, all Islamic courts in Malaysia follow the Shafi’i School of Islamic law (which is common throughout Southeast Asia). 12 “Pas finds hudud a tough sell with allies,” in New Straits Times, Sep. 9, 2010, (http://www.nst.com.my/ nst/articles/20beh/Article/) (Oct. 12, 2010) 13 Besides 13 states, Malaysia has two federal territories. 14 The national profile for Malaysia on the website of the transnational advocacy network Musawah, http:// www.musawah.org/np_malaysia.asp (Oct. 12, 2010) 10
Gender and transition in Southeast Asia: conceptual travel?
men. A woman, for instance, “must go to court and obtain a judicial divorce on one of a number of very specific grounds that require extensive evidence,” whereas a man can simply divorce his wife at will.15 The divorce message may even be submitted via SMS. A woman can only marry with a (male) guardian's consent, regardless of her age, and she cannot attain guardianship of her children. These and other provisions were sold as “reforms” to the family law, leading to protests of women's organizations and the formulation of an alternative draft of the law. In late 2005, regressive amendments to the Islamic Family Law were passed by the Parliament and the Senate. These amendments further discriminated against women by loosening restrictions on polygamy and using gender neutral language to extend a wife's right to fasakh divorce [= divorce by a judge on specific grounds such as impotence; C.D.] to the husband, allow a husband to get a court order to stop his wife from disposing of her property during divorce proceedings, and enable a husband to acquire a share of the matrimonial assets at the time of polygamy. However, because of outcry by women's organisations and the general public, the Prime Minister ordered the Attorney General to redraft the bill. Women's groups were given a seat at the table for this process. A new bill has been finalised and awaits submission to Parliament.16 The Islamic Family Law of the federal territories was meant to function as a model for the other states. But until today, submission to parliament of the redrafted bill has not taken place. Moreover, the rise of political Islam has facilitated religiously inspired jurisdiction. In July 2009, a Muslim woman was sentenced to caning by a shari’a court because she had been caught drinking beer.17 The sentence caused considerable uproar since this form of punishment is usually applied to men, and aside from the gender aspect, it is a physical punishment human rights activists have been criticizing for years. After much debate in the media and beyond curtains, the defendant received a royal pardon by the Sultan of her home state Pahang. Touching a similar vein, an attempt by the federal government in May 2008 to curb women's traveling rights did not materialize. The plan required a written consent from women's families or employers if they intended to travel abroad on their own.18 It is unclear whether this proposal had any religious grounding, but the fact that religious perspectives on public behavior and citizens' rights have a growing impact on the country's jurisdiction, law- and policy making is undeniable. In June 2004, a coalition of lawyers and civil society activists formed an advocacy group in order to raise awareness for “the erosion of constitutionally enshrined liberties” (Lee 2010, p.83). Their alert derived from several episodes involving non-Muslim citizens, Muslim citizens who decline to follow state-sanctioned interpretations of Islam, or women who suffer from family laws that are rooted in Islamic law (Lee 2010, pp.83–85). Those citizens' cases all nourished the feeling that Islamic law was gaining stronger legal weight than the country's supreme law, i.e., the constitution. 15
http://www.musawah.org/np_malaysia.asp (Oct. 12, 2010) http://www.musawah.org/np_malaysia.asp (Oct. 12, 2010) 17 See http://www.wluml.org/node/5443 (Oct. 12, 2010). 18 Malaysia plans women travel curbs, in BBC News, May 04, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ 7382859.stm (June 15, 2008). 16
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Aside from those who fear an encroachment of Islamization on their private life, a huge number of Malaysian Muslim women strive for a strengthening of their faith and accumulation of Islamic knowledge. As Sylva Frisk's study illustrates in great detail, Islamization in the Malaysian case has opened up possibilities for women to enter into religious debate and education, through which they produce, recreate and transform Islamic discourse and practice (Frisk 2009, p.5). Education and learning are crucial to the Muslim women who seek to enhance their knowledge about their religion. Religious learning takes place in mosques, in community prayer rooms (surau), in private houses, or at the workplace. It often includes the acquisition of Arabic as the language of the Qur’an (Frisk 2009, pp. 65– 82). Women with profound Islamic knowledge “can find an alternative road to social esteem through a new career as religious teachers” (Frisk 2009, p. 83). The wish to devote more time to religion, the longing for submission to God, and the interest in a more intensive or more correct understanding of the meaning of Islam have not been forced on those women. It is their own, individual choice and decision which has, no doubt, become encouraged and stimulated by the Islamization of public life and politics in Malaysia. Islamic resurgence and Islamization at the federal and state level has facilitated the articulation and eventual realization of women's individual or collective demand for the provision of educational, learning, and worship facilities. The term Islamization thus means different things to different people—it is a positive development for those who associate the assertion of their rights and wishes as Muslims with it, while it is seen as a danger to the protection of women's (constitutionally guaranteed) rights by others. In a representative political system, it would be natural to assume that such a pluralism of interests and perceptions is somehow reflected in the composition of a country's political bodies (parliament, parties). Indeed, Malaysia's main political parties include women's and young women's wings which may make up significant portions of party membership (Ting 2007, p. 75). Yet, parliamentary representation circles around 10 % in the House of Representatives.19 The belief in numbers is pretty much misplaced, particularly in a country where religion and ethnicity play a crucial role for career patterns and upward social mobility. The minister for Women, Family and Community development Shahrizat Jalil, who also heads the women's wing of Malaysia's most influential party United Malays National Organisation, called for a greater role of the women's wing in government—and at the same time refused to compromise on any alteration of the constitution's Art. 153, which grants special rights to ethnic Malays (The Malaysian Insider 2010). At the intersection of race and gender, the unwritten laws of race often bend the unwritten laws of gender. A stronger female say in the Malaysian government should not automatically be equated with a universal strengthening of women's rights and status in society. As in the case of Indonesia, in terms of representation of interests, the question boils down to who is represented where and what does representation entail?
19
For women's parliamentary representation around the world, see www.ipu.org.
Gender and transition in Southeast Asia: conceptual travel?
Gendering transition The trajectory of the literature on transition reflects a certain dynamic of the concept, beginning with the famous study of O’Donnell and Schmitter on transitions from authoritarian rule (1986), passing through a period of concerted research on political transition in Eastern Europe (after the end of the Cold War) and the problems of democratic consolidation (Linz and Stepan 1996), through fresh approaches emphasizing the sustainability of authoritarianism rather than a progress in democratization (Linz and Stepan 1996; Frankenberger and Albrecht 2010), and merging into attempts to create an analytical framework for all sorts of transformation (Merkel 2010).20 Only a few works of this array of studies have raised the issue of gender and transition. Laudable exceptions are Birgit Sauer's and Eva Kreisky's article from 1996 which placed a question mark behind the phrase “transition to democracy”, or Claudia von Braunmühl's (1997) examination of the interplay between transition, gender, and development. A systematic construction of a gendered concept of transition, however, has yet to enter the academic arena. First steps in this direction are undertaken in the following paragraphs, based on the guidelines mentioned above (Goertz and Mazur 2008, p. 15) and on the empirical findings from Indonesia and Malaysia. In terms of context, O’Donnell's and Schmitter's study of the mid-1980s drew its insights from the analysis of transitions in Southern European and Latin American countries. While the geographical scope of empirical case studies was gradually enlarged (via Eastern Europe, Asia, Arab countries, and others), the “Western bias” of the concept of transition remained as it was still connected to democracy as the term of reference. But it did travel a lot and is nowadays employed in global ranking such as the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI). The eventual goal of transformation in the BTI is a normatively based notion of “democracy and market economy.”21 Wolfgang Merkel coined the term “embedded democracy” in order to denote an ideal type of a functioning democratic system; systems displaying malfunctions or deficits in one or more of the regime parts of an embedded democracy are considered “defective democracies” (Merkel et al. 2003). The most prominent phases of transition according to Merkel (2010, p. 94) are (1) the end of an autocratic regime, (2) the institutionalization of democracy, and (3) the consolidation of democracy. From this context, it becomes clear that transition is ultimately linked to the idea of democracy. Putting the issue of gendering democracy per se aside, the question here is what dimensions a three-phase model of transition implies (“dimensions that define the concept” in the guideline list of Goertz and Mazur). A strong one is the dimension of process (or even progress): transition is meant to start somewhere and, preferably, end somewhere else. Ideally, it has a direction. A third dimension is the difference between a situation A, from where transition starts, and situations B, C, D, and so on during the process of transition. These dimensions are interdependent and work within the concept of transition (“interdependence of these dimensions” according to Goertz and Mazur). If they stop to work, transition stops. This also hints at the 20
The more recent events in the context of the Arab Spring are still too fresh for a solid theoretical reflection; that is why they are not taken into deeper consideration here. 21 For details, see http://www.bertelsmann-transformation-index.de/en/ (accessed 16 March 2011).
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“necessity guideline” on the one hand, since transition necessarily moves in a certain direction and at the “negation guideline” on the other hand, since the opposite of transition is stagnation. If gender equality, equal participation, and equal representation were criteria for the analysis of the said dimensions at all, transition in Indonesia would have to be evaluated as pluri-directed: Whereas for some citizens, it moves towards democracy, for others (women in particular), it moves towards authoritarianism. Analyzing the dimensions of transition thus requires to consider the institutional setting of process/progress, direction and difference, and the impact on actors alike. How then to operationalize the dimensions of transition? The said dimensions of transition are gender neutral as long as they are not operationalized. In other words, problems occur in the application of the operationalization guideline. The case of Indonesia may illustrate this point. The dimension of process/progress is mainly linked to the three phases of transition mentioned above. This means that (1) the autocratic regime of Suharto was replaced by a non-autocratic regime, (2) democratic institutions such as elections of representatives on the district became installed, and (3) these institutions are on their way to be consolidated because multiple elections have taken place since the regime changed. A gendered perspective, however, reveals a rather different assessment. On the local level, an autocratic style of government is still in place, albeit carried out by different people than before. These people enjoy the company of self-appointed law and order forces that do not hesitate to articulate their will through violent means. New institutions have come up by way of bylaws or perda which rarely cater to women's equal participation in politics and public life. The consolidation of this combination of “democratically” legitimized violence and moral surveillance is far from any genderequal or progressive approach. For women in particular, the direction of transition is not a clear one, if not a retrograde one. It is named “democratic” but is actually heading towards an increasing control of women's attire, behavior, and whereabouts. What difference does the consolidation of this kind of democracy make then? The need to focus on policy impacts instead of outputs and outcomes seems obvious if we want to apply and evaluate the dimensions of the concept of transition in a substantive, gendered way. The case of Malaysia brings another issue to the fore and puts the simple conclusion of the need to evaluate the dimensions of transition in a gendered manner into perspective. In Malaysia, the process of Islamization seems to proceed faster than the transition to democracy. This is important insofar as religion as a political force does not constitute a variable, let alone a decisive one, in the concept of transition. In this regard, religion is a non-issue in the theory of transition, whereas it is the most important frame of reference for the majority of political decision makers in Malaysia. A political system not conforming to the principles of Islam is a mismatch for Malaysian society and for ethnic Malays in particular. The context guideline and along with it the travel guideline are at stake here. The concept of transition was framed with reference to the concept of democracy, i.e., democracy became the prism through which transition could be looked at and become conceptualized. If the prism changes from democracy to Islam—or “religion” for that matter—the consistency of democratic procedures with principles of Islam emerges as the dependent variable. How does this work out in the application of the guidelines for gendering the concept of transition? The concept of democracy can travel as far as it is reconcilable with the
Gender and transition in Southeast Asia: conceptual travel?
principles of Islam that are considered relevant. Women's rights, too, have to be compatible with Islamic principles. Although this can have an utterly different meaning to different female communities—as the sketch of women striving for full gender equality and those striving for spiritual empowerment illustrates—the frame of reference is a just Islamic order rather than a democratic system. For non-Muslim women in Malaysia, however, Islam is neither a frame of reference nor is compatibility with Islamic principles a benchmark for transition or democratization. Democratic rather than Islamic principles would rank high. Consequently, the very process and direction of transition is important for those whose reference point is democracy; for others, it is of minor importance if the process and direction of transition lead to democratization since consistency with religiously informed conceptions of justice, empowerment, etc., is of prior concern. Cleavages in the perception of transition occur along religious (often accompanied by ethnic) rather than gender or sex lines. The distinction between male and female actor groups is of limited empirical value with regard to the plurality of interests within the group of women. A gendered concept of transition would have to be operationalized not only in regard to the impact on male or female actors, but would have to recognize that in reality there is no such thing as “women” as a homogenous actor group. Simple reasoning could now propose that since there is no “women's factor” to transition (since “women” as a category does not denote an actor group such as “citizens” or “elites”), there is no need to gender the concept of transition. But it is not that simple. Gendering transition means at the same time to acknowledge that women conceive of process/progress, direction, and difference differently from men (as illustrated in the case of Indonesian “democracy”) and that “women” is not a category that can be juxtaposed against “men” or be treated as a homogenous entity (as illustrated in the case of Malaysia). Taking a gendered approach seriously means to deconstruct the very elements that determine our analytical framework. It means to understand that conventional analytical categories in the theoretical reflection on transition such as “democratic forces,” “elites,” “veto players,” and the like should first of all not be treated as gender-neutral categories. In a second step, gendering them by merely distinguishing between male and female does not do justice to the empirical situation at hand. In multiethnic, multi-religious societies, the question of whose interests are represented by who is more complex than the dichotomy of women's interests and men's interests in conventional gender approaches suggests. At the end of the day, gendering concepts means understanding intersection, crosscuttings, differences, and overlaps in empirical reality that are oftentimes neglected in the analytical framework for hypothesis testing.
Concluding remarks What has been done in the paragraphs above is more or less exactly what Timothy Mitchell has criticized—with reference to the Middle East—as using the study of areas as “testing grounds for the universalization of western social sciences” (Mitchell 2003, p. 98). The only difference is that this article has tried to point out the difficulties that occur when theoretical assumptions and categories are taken for granted and understood as universally applicable to (empirical) analytical studies. Apart from that, it draws on findings, for instance in gender studies, that do not even
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bother to raise the issue of universality or area specificity—the volume of Goertz and Mazur, which has served as a guiding study here, is a case in point. As an author and scholar, I am aware of the hegemonies and hierarchies in the business of global knowledge production. Yet, I am convinced that some analytical categories are indeed of universal relevance, and gender is one of them. What area-specific (here: Southeast Asian) studies nonetheless reveal is that a gender-sensitive approach in social science (here: the example of transition studies) should not fall into the trap of taking “gender” exclusively as a synonym for “women.” In order to illustrate this fact and to raise awareness for both the gender issue in transition and the heterogeneity of actor groups, Southeast Asian transition states serve as an important case in point. While fully subscribing to Mitchell's critique of the “testing grounds,” I cannot deny the value of this kind of area studies for a constant awareness raising of the fallacies that Western-centered knowledge production may lead to.
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