This volume brings together an impressive array of internationally recognized scholars from around the world to examine the many facets of gender politics in Asia. Its central concern is how women in various gendered contexts in Asia position themselves in the (re)production of gender relations, and how they manoeuver in order to preserve or alter these. It covers fields as varied as the use of dress as a political weapon, the practice of healing as an indirect challenge to the dominant gender and political orders, and religious ordination as a struggle for equity in Buddhism.

Global processes with flows in money, commodities, and people have made it increasingly varied and blurred what it means to be a female or male in Asia today. Socio-economic and cultural patterns in Asia intersect with one another and, in doing so, they translate into power relations that create both possibilities and constraints for women and men. By focusing on unequal access to political and religious power, occupation, and health facilities, as well as different options when it comes to family life and sexuality, the recognition of women and men is explored in this volume as...

This study of the everyday religious practice of pious women within Kuala Lumpur's affluent Malay middle class reveals that women play an active part in the Islamization process by organizing and participating in public programs of religious education, transforming the traditionally male-dominated space of the mosque and breaking men's monopoly over positions of religious authority.--Sylva Frisk is a lecturer in the School of Global Studies at Gothenburg University, Sweden.

Religion plays a central role in Thai society with Buddhism intertwined in the daily lives of the people. Religion also plays an important role in establishing gender boundaries. The growth in recent decades of self-governing nunneries and the increasing interest of Thai women in a Buddhist monastic life are notable changes in the religion-gender dynamic. This anthropological study addresses religion and gender relations, analysing this through the lens of the lives, actions and role in Thai society of Buddhist nuns (mae chii). It raises questions about how the position of Thai Buddhist nuns...