Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

In Malaysia, on the other hand, the New Population
Policy, launched in 1984 after a deliberate program of
promoting family planning, has a distinctly pro-natalist
objective, particularly directed at the Malay Muslim
population: to create “a larger consumer base with
increasing purchasing power to generate and support
industrial growth.” While the policy seems to have had
minimal success since fertility rates of all major ethnic
groups continue to decline, it has had an ideological
and psychological impact, reinforcing the notion that
women’s primary role is to stay at home and bear and
rear children, thus creating feelings of conflict, guilt and
confusion among the increasing majority of women
who take a different path. (Raj and others, 1998)
Third, as the notion of wifehood and motherhood in
Malaysia and the Philippines continues to define women
and female identity, sexual relationships with men will
be central to these definitions. The value of women as
sexual beings, as procreators, and as caretakers of the
young dominates male and female discourse, in the
Philippines and in Malaysia, especially among Indians
and Malays. For example, Muslim men speak of women’s
bodies more in terms of the womb than of personhood. 12
Men continue to define themselves as heads of households
where women are in charge of children, even where
their wives are also engaged in paid work. In Malaysia, the
notion of motherhood and thus of sexual subservience
to husband, state and Islam is in fact promoted by the
State, especially among Muslim women, as a value in
itself and as a means to increase the population to
provide for both the labor and consumer base of a rapidly
industrializing state. Indeed some measure of economic
prosperity in Malaysia has provided the impetus for a
return to women’s focus in the domestic sphere. In the
Philippines, religious ties are a major factor in the
continued promotion of the primary role of women as
bearers of children and caretakers of the family. However,
where the majority is poor or working class, the option
of keeping women at home is hardly a viable one; the
ideal of motherhood and mothering is only achievable
among the middle classes.
But whether poor, working, or middle class, women
will need men if they are to “fulfill” their femininity
and their destinies as mothers. To the extent that family
reinforces the norm of motherhood, and women see
themselves primarily in this role, then women will go
to great lengths to preserve marital and therefore sexual
relationships. Thus in the Philippines, most women see
womanizing for what it is—as an agent of male
privilege—but some tolerate it because they believe
that womanizing inheres in male identity. It is part and
parcel of masculinity to have sexual needs that have to
ENGAGING MODERNITY: RELIGION, GENDER, AND ART 105
be satisfied—that if you take away their womanizing,
you take away their masculinity. Womanizing is a natural
urge gone out of control, very much like drinking to
excess. Thus to challenge male sexuality is to destabilize
the route to the fulfillment of feminine identity.
SUMMARY AND SOME CONCLUSIONS
In summary, the broader context reveals that while
globalization has to some extent involved a marketconsumer
frame to redefine sexual notions and legitimize
entitlements to sexual expression, it is also clearly
intensifying the structural factors at work behind complex
processes which undermine national identity, job security,
gender equality and bodily integrity. The broader
context also suggests that dominant economic practices
and dominant ideological formations both produce and
limit the forms, scope and force of the challenges which
invariably arise from them. In both Malaysia and the
Philippines, for both similar and different reasons, the
notion of sexual rights and the assertion of these rights
are not widespread.
In conclusion, this study confirms that sexual relationships
in the Philippines and Malaysia incorporate imbalances
in power based on gender and social class and in Malaysia,
of ethnicity, as well. Gender differences reflect both
structural and ideological forces and the power and
resource inequities are played out in ways that severely
affect girls’ and women’s ability to determine their own
sexual and reproductive paths. The sexual incorporates
disparities in physical strength and access to material and
social resources. For the most part, girls and women
often have little control over what happens to them sexually—over
men’s sexual access to their bodies and the
conditions under which sexual encounters take place. At
the heart of having sex with a partner lies an individual’s
ability to make choices and the question of choice is a
complex one. Among women, what seems on the surface
to be a voluntary sexual activity is driven by deeply felt
needs, ranging from playing out gender norms to economic
support to fending off physical abuse. Women, wives
especially, are always vulnerable to unwanted pregnancy
or disease as a result of their lack of control over the
terms of their sexual relationships. As is the case
in almost all societies a sexual double standard
heightens the vulnerability of even sexually monogamous
women to infection from STDs. The extent to which a
woman is able to set the terms of a particular sexual act
or relationship defines her capacity to enjoy her own
sexuality as well as to protect herself against forced sex,
unwanted sex acts, unwanted pregnancy, or sexually
transmitted diseases.
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows