Political Masculinities in the Context of Asia's Missing Women - Rahm, Laura
Since the early 1980s, several Asian countries - from Armenia to Vietnam - have faced growing sex imbalances at birth due to gender-biased sex selection. There are common features in the political discourse surrounding this phenomenon casting demographic imbalance as a problem for men. In this case gender equality (at birth) becomes a means to satisfy male needs such as to provide marriage prospects and/or prevent perceived hazards (e.g. increase in crime, violence, homosexuality, political unrest). This kind of masculinized discourse reinforces exactly those gender biases it seeks to fix by treating gender equality as a means rather than as an end in and of itself. This paper will draws from multiple sources including public statements in newspapers, reports, and semi-structured interviews with key policy makers to capture gender dissonances in the policy discourse around sex selection. Special emphasis will be placed on data collected during the past 8-month field research in India, Vietnam and South Korea. Are there common characteristics of political masculinities during social transition that can be identified across cultures and times? The proposed paper aims to approach this question by providing a multi country comparison of political masculinities in the context of Asia’s missing women.
00000
Keywords: conferencePaper