ABSTRACT
With the implied premise that family matters cannot be discussed in a gender vacuum, the preceding chapters on marriage, parenthood and social capital in families, have paved the way to this direct deliberation on the gender issue. I address in this chapter the problems faced by Asian women and men in their striving to attain a coherent social life whereby the joys and benefits of marriage and parenthood may be successfully combined with their developing as intelligent, efficient, hard-working and thriving income earners, if so they wish. The context is contemporary Asia, or more specifically, four East Asian (China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea) and six Southeast Asian (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) countries. The struggle for coherence of their gender norms is a relatively new phenomenon in these countries compared to Western countries. It may be traced back to about five decades ago – although developing at a different pace in each country and more so in urban than in rural areas – and it has increased in intensity due to the improvement in women’s education and the mounting social pressures on them to succeed on both fronts, their homes and their non-family occupations. With men’s and women’s gender roles being closely intertwined, any changes in one necessarily affect the other. This preoccupation is manifest in this discussion despite the dearth of direct information on men’s attitudes and actions on gender matters compared to the attention that women’s position in society has received from social scientists.
