AWARE celebrates 21 years

How do you celebrate Singapore 's favourite feminist's 21st birthday? With an ultra-glam soiree of course, dah-ling!

Come party with AWARE in its slickest, chicest, swishest party ever. Look forward to cocktails, sumptuous NOVUS canapes, and a glitzy champagne and chocolate buffet in the Perrier-Jouet Salon. Catch Dim Sum Dolly Pam Oei, jazz diva Alemay Fernandez on stage , and enjoy a Fashion Show from up-and-coming local designer Kavita Thulasidas on this night of banter, bliss and bubbly.

Event link>>

Are We Done? Women’s Issues in Singapore

Her Story, SCWO's 25th Anniversary, Celebrating Womanhood

(editor, Tisa Ng, page 66-67)

Are We Done? Women’s Issues in Singapore

By Braema Marthi

It’s is seductive to put women’s rights on a back burner, lean back and just enjoy the low lying fruits on the tree of gender quality. It would be lovely to put one’s feet up and reap the benefits of the efforts of women who have helped to advance the women’s cause.

Their advocacy has resulted in education as a right, paving the path for women to become economically independent and to have greater flexibility in career and family life choices. This is a good place to be.

We only have to compare ourselves with women in countries where living in abject poverty drives them to prostitution, and it is already easy to become complacent and lull ourselves into thinking that we are accomplished and have achieved gender equality.

But let me be a party pooper and recall that Singapore is a developed country, a first world nation. As such, it makes better sense that we benchmark our progress against that of developed countries or that we use Gender Development Indices to measure our progress. Given that, Singapore is very open to globalization, we also need to measure our progress against the changing landscape of the world.

Globalisation has made it necessary that we keep on learning new skills to maintain our own economic relevance. We have seen that today’s market can disappear as soon as a cheaper one appears and that any gap in IT knowledge is detrimental to that individual in a wired Singapore.

Based on just these two factors- that we are a developed nation and that we are impacted by globalisation - I would like to say that we need to look beyond the low lying fruits of equal access to basic education, access to health, and access to citizenship rights for children. We need to continues to advocate and remain focused on some primary areas that will affect all of us for the next ten years, at least.

Let’s first drop our overly cautious and inconsistent approach in affirming gender equality. The Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE)’s Beyond Babies Report shows that gender equality were decisively put in place in Denmark with laws in the 1900s, and then it took more than 50 years before the mindset changes to one where today Danish men and women share equitably their household, childcare and workplace duties as a given principle for successful relationships. So no more “men as heads of household statements”, I say, as we learn from Denmark.

While there’s much that we still need to do, what needs to be on our advocacy radar will include:

• the widening disparity in CPF savings between men and women as they grow older, and the dilemma of managing the health costs of women as they live longer and remain vulnerable to more ailments
• the need for constant and appropriate training opportunities and financial empowerment courses to help women remain employable in the face of structural unemployment in a globalised world.
• The increased susceptibility of women, primarily homemakers, to HIV/Aids due to their partner’s careless safe-sex practices with sex workers, whose numbers have increased here and in nearby countries making the services easily accessible.
• The patronage women still face through disparaging remarks in social discourse, in the media and in jokes.

While it is easier to accept that women in Singapore have got most of their rights and ought to, gratefully, not contest the issue of women’s rights anymore, and some of us may indeed wish it could be so, it only makes sense to reach out for those fruits higher ip the gender equality tree.

The climb continues. And in that climb, lest we forget, let’s be global citizens, and not limit those fruits to just our own citizens as there are many foreign women here who ought to have more access to those fruits too..

Major achievement - Vivien Maiden

Bournemouth University

>>http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/ihcs/childhealth.html

in the family..

Vivien Maiden - BSc (Hons) Nursing Studies, Educational Facilitator - Child Health, Poole Hospital NHS Trust

Following the traditional method of training and many years as a staff nurse within child health, I felt it was time for a challenge. I wanted to update and improve my academic knowledge in keeping with the more recently qualified nurses.

Initially my goal was to complete the Diploma of Professional Studies in Nursing, I found the course a challenge, but thoroughly enjoyed it. Somehow I was persuaded to continue my studies and complete the degree course. It was difficult juggling a full time job as a Deputy Sister on a busy children's ward, studying and trying to remain sane but it was worth it in the end.

Following research during my studies I developed an interest in pain management in paediatrics. This resulted in changes within the unit and being invited to do presentations at the university to pre-and post-registration child branch nurses. I enjoyed teaching and being involved in the academic side of nursing. I am now employed as an Educational Facilitator, working with the child health team at the university and also within the child health unit at Poole.

...........

Major achievement

From the Echo, first published Friday 12th Dec 2003.

Source: http://archive.bournemouthecho.co.uk/2003/12/12/73276.html

AFTER 18 years in the Territorial Army, Vivien Maiden had never seen active service overseas - until she was called up for a tour of duty in the Gulf earlier this year.

Vivien swapped her usual role as educational facilitator on Poole Hospital's children's unit for general nursing in a desert war zone.

Apart from the discomforts of living and working in tents with basic sanitary arrangements, huge spiders and scorpions, she faced the threat of a nuclear, chemical or biological attack from Saddam Hussein's forces.

Vivien, 41, a Major in the Queen Alexandra Royal Army Nursing Corps, was mobilised at the beginning of February as tension was building in the Middle East.

She was initially attached to Camp Coyote in Kuwait, where she helped set up a 150-200 bedded field hospital in the middle of the desert.

"We did it with the help of the engineers and Gurkhas," she said. "We were up and fully running within two weeks. It was all tentage and by the end of it, we had electricity and fully running water."

Vivien was still in Kuwait when war broke out on March 20. "At the beginning we had nuclear, chemical and biological suits. We were covered from head to foot. We had to have our respirators on within nine seconds, then try and put the rest of the kit on as soon as possible," she said.

"We used to end up sleeping in it. The first day when war started, we had to put everything on. The temperature was in the high 20s (Celsius). Having our clothes and kit on and being inside a tent it was very hot. We just lay there and couldn't really move.

"Occasionally we would hear missiles going over and hear bangs. It was scary, but we all said that was what we had trained for."

Vivien was working on a medical ward dealing with complaints such as asthma, chest infections, pneumonia and eye injuries.

She admits to fantasising about food: "Anything that didn't look like white or brown stew. The cooks did their best, but basically we were eating rations only. There's only so much you can do with tinned chicken, tinned mince and corned beef.

"At lunchtime, our staple diet was noodles, cream of mushroom, cream of chicken or golden vegetable soup. We had lots of things like Mars bars, Lion bars and bags of boiled sweets. I'm not much of a drinker, but I could visualise very clearly a nice cold glass of Chardonnay. It was just because there was no alcohol."

At the beginning of April, Vivien was sent to another field hospital 10km south of Basra in Iraq. "Things had quietened down by then. We were protected by all the other units around us.

"Facilities were pretty basic and I think when I left temperatures were hitting 56 degrees Celsius at midday. The hospital was all in tents and it got quite hot inside. Even though there was air conditioning, it kept breaking down."

In Iraq, she was nursing civilians and prisoners of war as well as British troops. "There were Iraqi children admitted, most of them with quite severe injuries either from burns or picking up incendiary devices. They usually went to the intensive therapy unit or got transferred.

"By the time we were there, people were using kerosene for cooking and had a lot of accidents in their homes. Most of the civilians I met seemed pleased with what we were doing."

Downsides of the whole experience included not being able to contact her parents in Poole when the war began, trying to give intravenous drugs in the middle of sandstorms, coping with one tap for every 25 patients, and coming down with a stomach bug just 36 hours after arriving in Iraq.

"We did feel a lot safer there than in Kuwait, probably because we knew more what was happening," said Vivien. "It's a bit scary now. If I was called back, I would have to go, but I wouldn't volunteer."

She was demobbed in mid-May and returned to working at Poole, where she combines her duties on the wards with teaching at the university and studying for her masters degree.

Vivien has been given a certificate signed by Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and Chief of Defence Staff Michael Walker thanking her for her contribution. Poole Hospital NHS Trust has been given a SaBRE (Supporting Britain's Reservists and Employers) certificate by the Ministry of Defence for supporting the volunteer reserve force.

giving up a career for a passion

Giving up a career for a passion

by Jasmine Yin

18 September 2006 | TODAY (Singapore)

WHEN it comes to choosing her career, Ms Tan Joo Hymn, 37, adopts a simple - yet unconventional - philosophy.

Happiness is her primary concern, never mind if the choice is not "right" by societal standards.

The professional track record of the president of the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) is not for the faint-hearted.

In 1998, she gave up her illustrious legal career - she worked for law firms in England, Hong Kong and Singapore for three years - to teach at a pre-school.

Then in another drastic switch, she chose to stay home after she got married and became a mother of one.

She also started volunteering at Aware.

How did a successful lawyer trained at Warwick University get down to the decision to first, take up childhood education, and then, to give it all up to stay at home?

"You have to know what you want. I say this not in terms of what you want for your whole life, but what you want for now or the next few years. There was so much pressure to make the right decision when I was younger, but I gave up," she told Today.

"Many Singaporeans feel pressured and tend to put aside their happiness and personal goals for monetary success. We're so concerned with doing the right thing that we forget what we want, what will make us happy."

Naturally, her parents - who had egged her on to pursue law - were not thrilled with her decision to become a pre-school teacher, she recalled.

"It was easy to quit law in the sense that, I have been through the whole system and knew with every cell in my body that it was not something that I want to do."

It was not a burning desire that prompted her to become an early childhood teacher for five years, Ms Tan said, conceding that she had several other interests to pursue after quitting law.

But she chose this profession because she liked children and felt that pre-school was "the most liberal and progressive segment in education in Singapore", where there is more leeway for creative and individualised learning to take place, unlike the more rigid Ministry of Education syllabi that teachers have to follow at primary and secondary schools.

Her path to social activism was a more instinctive one, thanks to her undergraduate days of debating social issues with professors and nights spent at the kitchen table with college mates from around the world.

"I was exposed to a lot of views; people were not afraid to speak up. The whole British premise of university was where kids go to argue themselves silly, find out what their values are and hopefully become sensible adults!

"That was a time when I really started to question a lot of things and started to read up a lot on feminism."

Her prime interests in law were on women and the family, such as family violence and divorce. Ms Tan had even devoted a major paper on how lesbians were denied custody of their children during a divorce.

It does not make sense to her why it is easier to get married than divorced, especially if there are regulations imposed by various government agencies in Singapore about home ownership that forces "two people who just cannot live together anymore to stay together for economic reasons".

And it is to address such social inadequacies that Aware comes into play.

"I heard about its reputation and decided that I wanted to have a part in what it was doing," said Ms Tan, who joined Aware in 1999.

Looking back, does she have any regrets about leaving the lucrative legal profession?

"If you do what makes you happy, you will have enough money because when you are happy, you think more clearly, you're more passionate about wanting to make whatever you do succeed.

"I had the hang-up at 18 years old to want to plan for the rest of my life. But nobody does something for his or her whole life now. People change jobs, switch from one industry to another."

And if you do not know what you want, Ms Tan proffered: "Most people know what they do not want. So make a list of what you are keen on exploring, then experiment with these options and keep crossing off the options until you arrive at a point when everything just falls into place."

Do you, sometimes, like Ms Tan, toy with the idea of giving up your "rational"

___

Follow your passion, discover what makes you truly happy

- Alka Chandiramani- Agnes Meurzec

25 September 2006

Our On The Go column featuring Aware president Tan Joo Hymn last week struck a chord with many readers, who wrote in to share their thoughts. We extract a few here:

"We have so many possessions, be it materialistic or otherwise, that we lose focus on what truly makes us happy. We all have secret wishes and desires that we've buried under the needs of children, family and work - things we've been meaning to do, but haven't gotten around to doing. When we abandon our dreams in the face of a busy life, our life becomes a bit blander. Being passionate about something and having the willpower to carry it forward will not only electrify but enliven our lives as Ms Tan has shown."

"What you want to do can be different from what you should do. Happily doing what you like may not make you live happily.

"I was trained as an engineer and I love engineering. But when I had children, in order to give them a comfortable life, I took up an offer to venture into business. I've earned enough to fulfil my wish, and I think I am happier now than when I was an engineer. To be an engineer was my dream, but so was the goal to provide well for my children. One job makes me happy immediately; the other gives more satisfaction in the long run. It is good to explore the various options in life - to search and review our priorities." - Tan

"I was deeply moved after reading about your choice of passion over your career. I am a property agent but every morning, I get up without feeling the excitement of a new day, but with the feeling of missing the true meaning and purpose of life.

"I have been a member of Aware, SCWO and Breast Cancer Foundation for years. I feel it is vital to support those associations for women and it is every woman's duty to be involved, supportive and part of it.

"Born and raised in France, I have been living in Singapore for over 15 years. My husband and I separated eight years ago. I want you to know that it is partly because of pro-active associations like yours that I did not hesitate a minute to raise "alone" my little girls here, knowing that they would be respected and heard.

Women in Thailand

Prime News
Relishing a new-found freedom, not babies

Nirmal Ghosh, THAILAND CORRESPONDENT

30 October 2006

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.'