Women in Thailand
Relishing a new-found freedom, not babies
BANGKOK - YING, 29, has a good job with the Bangkok office of a major international aid organisation.
The accomplished, soft-spoken Bangkok native has a master's degree from a British university.
To marketers, she represents an enticing new target - independent young women with spending power.
But to demographers, the unmarried woman is a statistic that points to a worrying future: an ageing society in which young people must increasingly take on the burden of earning and paying taxes.
For now, Bangkok marketers are tapping the lucrative niche.
Reports indicate that women's cosmetic products sell consistently well in malls and department stores, regardless of the general economic environment.
A handful of clubs and restaurants exclusively for women have opened over the past 12 months. The California Fitness chain launched separate women-only gyms this year.
Much of this is driven by life in Bangkok, where freedom and career opportunities offer a direction away from the stereotypes that dog women in Thailand.
Said Professor Kanjapat Korsieporn of Chulalongkorn University's Social Research Institute: 'Women in Bangkok are more economically independent, more confident, more expressive.'
This marks a shift within a patriarchal society in which women have had to accept their lower position in society and, until recently, lower daily wages than men.
'Women are seen to be sensitive, weak, submissive and service-minded, whereas men are equated with such qualities as rationality, decisiveness, strength and leadership,' notes a Gender and Development Research Institute study.
Women outnumber men slightly in Thailand's population of roughly 63million and more women than men graduate with bachelor's and master's degrees.
But when it comes to political representation, women are under-represented.
In former premier Thaksin Shinawatra's first administration, only 41 out of 500 members of Parliament were women. There was only one woman in his last Cabinet - Sudarat Keyuraphan, whose constituency is in Bangkok.
Thailand's new Cabinet features only two women, and the newly-appointed National Legislative Assembly remains overwhelmingly male.
Yet, recent years have seen progress in terms of women's rights, say researchers on gender issues.
But there is trouble ahead, as more Thais - most of them women living alone - get older.
Around six years ago, Thai researchers began voicing concern that the country's population was ageing even faster than in some industrialised countries.
Today, a new sense of urgency is apparent because, as the trend gathers pace, Thailand remains ill-equipped to deal with the consequences.
The number of people aged 60 and over will almost double in the next 20 years to about 11.6million, demographer Pramote Prasartkul, of Mahidol University's Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR), told a conference here last month.
At the same conference, Health Department director-general Somyos Charoensak said that by 2022, Thailand's population growth rate will have dwindled below replacement rate. By then, elderly people will outnumber children, he said.
Demographers trace the turning point to 1983, when the number of babies born in a year dipped below one million for the first time. It has continued to fall every year.
Two new phenomena are enhancing the consequences of a population control programme so successful that today, around 75per cent of women use birth control.
First, women are marrying later. In the 1960s, women married at about 25 years old on average; by 2000, the Thai bride's average age was 27.3 years.
Secondly, the proportion of women who stay unmarried is rising fast - and the number of children born per woman is falling.
Compounding these problems are a high divorce rate, which has spawned three million broken families - mostly in Bangkok - and an increase in the number of people living alone.
Professor Pramote says the main reason more women are staying single is that, while their rise up the status ladder brings greater independence, working harder and longer leaves little time to devote to their personal lives.
Bangkok - a city of around 10 million people - is the epicentre of all these trends.
Nationwide, some 37per cent of women of child-bearing age who live in urban areas are single, says Thailand's National Statistical Office.
But in Bangkok, as many as 41.8 per cent of women of child-bearing age - defined as 15 to 49 - are single.
Also, the traditional extended but close-knit family typical in Asian societies is rapidly becoming a thing of the past - and Bangkok leads the trend.
Ms Ubol Limsakul, an inspector for the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security, recently told a seminar on family empowerment that the transformation from an agrarian to an industrial society had created changes in Thailand's traditional family structures.
There are more nuclear families made up of only parents and children, rather than extended families.
In addition, some 1.3 million families in the capital are single-parent households, she said. And though there is no hard data yet, there are signs that a new type of family - same-sex couples - is growing, as Thai society becomes more open.
The long-term implications are grave, warn demographers. The country's health and welfare systems will come under increasing strain as more people need their services.
In the short term, many like Ying - who asked not to be identified by her full name - have mixed feelings.
'I do enjoy the freedom and independence,' she said, as she paid for an expensive lunch with another young, single Thai woman at one of Bangkok's trendiest restaurants.
'But' she added, with a rueful smile, 'I am not single by choice.'
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