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Female Roles in Pre-colonial Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Anthony Reid
Anthony Reid
Affiliation:
Australian National University
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Extract

Relations between the sexes are one of the areas in which a distinctive Southeast Asian pattern exists. Even the gradual strengthening of the influence of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism in their respective spheres over the last four centuries has by no means eliminated this common pattern of relatively high female autonomy and economic importance. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the region probably represented one extreme of human experience on these issues. It could not be said that women were equal to men, since there were very few areas in which they competed directly. Women had different functions from men, but these included transplanting and harvesting rice, weaving, and marketing. Their reproductive role gave them magical and ritual powers which it was difficult for men to match. These factors may explain why the value of daughters was never questioned in Southeast Asia as it was in China, India, and the Middle East; on the contrary, ‘the more daughters a man has, the richer he is’ (Galvão, 1544: 89; cf. Legazpi, 1569: 61).

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Articles
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Modern Asian Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , July 1988 , pp. 629 - 645
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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