ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a contemporary overview of women's initiatives in gender advancement and examines women's political activism in civil society in Thailand. It highlights enabling factors and obstacles to the advancement of women in politics during the recent two coups d’état in 2006 and 2014, and the ways in which authoritarian governments used women's rights and organisations to legitimise their rule and enhance their control over civil society, for instance in Thailand's conflict-prone Deep South. Some such efforts serve to confine women within traditional stereotypical roles. Even so, the chapter illustrates how both protracted political conflicts (between the pro-democracy and royalist movements, and the deadly ethno-political conflict between the Malay-Muslim resistance movement and the government in the south of Thailand) have resulted in a significant expansion of the political spaces available to women to advance their causes for social and gender justice. Although political polarisation has often resulted in human rights violations and sexism, in the current environment, a young feminist movement is attempting to politicise their gender agenda and challenge the patriarchal values embedded in social and political institutions.
