ABSTRACT
According to the country groupings used in the United Nations’ statistical reports on the worlds’ women, Asia includes a very broad spectrum of nations located in Eastern Asia (for example, China, Japan, and Korea), Southeast Asia (e.g., Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore, etc.), Southern Asia (e.g., India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.), Central Asia (e.g., Uzbekistan, etc.), and the Middle East, which they consider Western Asia (e.g., Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc.). Clearly the geographic, cultural, and demographic landscape of the Asian continent is immense, and in a short volume it is not possible to discuss each of these countries in detail. However, Asia is an important region, where more than 60 percent of the world’s population lives, and it includes the world’s two largest countries, China and India, each of which we cover in depth. Although race and ethnicity, culture and language, history, religion and the social, economic and political structures are different across East Asia, South Asia, Southeastern Asia, and the Middle East, transversal cultural flows are maintained through regional links. U.S. readers may be aware of military conflicts in the Middle East, the growth of women’s microenterprises in India, the One-Child policy in China, or other gendered practices in this region, but this section provides an overview of what social science feminist and gender researchers have considered their important issues.
