While some women have managed to reach the pinnacles of power and leadership in various parts of the world, in Asia they still face many hurdles. However, the situation is changing as more women seek to exert influence on social and political issues.

By Josie Gibson

	Dewi Fortuna Anwar.
	Dr Susan Blackburn.

For every Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi, there are millions of others who are not only uninvolved in the political process but who are completely alienated from it.

According to Dr Susan Blackburn, an Indonesia specialist and convenor of Politics at Monash University, women only get to positions of considerable power in democracies. "In military dictatorships, you never see women at the top. On the other hand, just because you’ve got a democracy doesn’t mean women are going to get the top job."

Post-Soeharto Indonesia is an interesting case study. In historic general elections in June, the party led by the daughter of Indonesia’s first president, the firm but quietly spoken Megawati Sukarnoputri, clearly won the most votes. Yet fierce horsetrading and criticism ensued, strongly fuelled, some claim, by an aversion to the idea of a woman president.

"There’s a feeling that Megawati, like Cory Aquino in the Philippines, is just a housewife, that she isn’t up to the job," says Dr Blackburn, who served as an independent monitor during the Indonesian poll.

Interestingly, the new parliament boasts far fewer women than its rubber-stamp predecessor. Dr Blackburn attributes this to the expectation that the new parliament will have real clout and legitimacy – power that men didn’t want to share. "Women’s experience in politics has been so limited that it was very difficult for them to nominate and get into the political process," she says. "It’s going to take a long time for them to find out how it all works and come up through the ranks of the political parties."

Someone who knows better than most how the political machinery works is commentator, analyst and presidential adviser Dewi Fortuna Anwar (PhD Arts 1990).

Dr Anwar was outspoken about the need for political and social change during the Soeharto era, testing the limits of her privileged role as an academic.

"Despite the restrictions, Indonesians could still voice their criticisms of the government, although mostly through the indirect means," she recalls. "Scholars, however, had much more freedom as we could carry out discussions in closed and more restricted forums."

Unlike some Soeharto critics, Dr Anwar never thought of leaving Indonesia, although she spent extended periods abroad.

"I felt that as someone who had been lucky enough to obtain a good education, I have a duty to my country," she explains. "In this I was much inspired by the early nationalist leaders, who were educated in Holland but returned to Indonesia to fight for independence."

Now the challenge is to guide Indonesia successfully through the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Dr Anwar has been among those helping to steer the course as an influential assistant to the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs under President B.J. Habibie.

Dr Blackburn says there is no doubt that prominent women such as Dewi Fortuna Anwar carry a heavy responsibility because of the scarcity of female role models. However, like Cory Aquino, she says, once in power they tend to confound their critics.

Information is the name of the age crucial for business and politics. It is a powerful tool in the hands of those working for justice and a fairer society. And it can be dangerous, as anti-corruption crusader Doctor Pasuk Phongpaichit has found in her native Thailand. Dr Pasuk Phongpaichit. To Dr Pasuk, economics is a simple matter: it’s about improving the plight of the poor and fighting injustice. From there, however, it gets more complicated, with Dr Pasuk having to put into practice all the knowledge she gained from Monash University (BEc (Hons) 1969, MEc 1971) and Cambridge, where she earned her doctorate. Now chairwoman of Chulalongkorn University’s Political Economy Centre in Bangkok and a member of the government’s research sub-committee of the Counter-Corruption Commission (CCC), Dr Pasuk’s published work has reached far outside the university to the very core of Thai society. It has earned the scorn of many powerful people and threats from a few. In 1982, Dr Pasuk published her first study, From Peasant Girls to Bangkok Masseuses, arguing that girls are exploited to help Thailand’s balance of payments. The book was controversial but the controversy pales in comparison to the reaction she and her husband Dr Chris Baker received last year with claims that illicit revenue from prostitution, drugs, gambling and the arms trade makes up nearly 20 per cent of the Thai economy. They backed the claims with statistics in Guns, Girls, Gambling, Ganja: Thailand’s Illegal Economy and Public Policy. "The problem is structural. The police force is badly paid, top-heavy, poorly trained, over-militarised. It needs a big change in structure, recruitment, training, and culture. Much the same can be said of the forestry department, customs, and some other offices," she said. Dr Pasuk entered Chulalongkorn University's school of political science and then switched to economics when she won a Colombo Plan scholarship to Monash in 1965. "Monash exposed me to a very democratic and liberal way of thinking, which made me appreciate the power of ordinary people," she recalled, citing the strong Australian trade unions as a good example of people's power to change things. - Mick Elmore

Southeast Asian politics can be studied as part of postgraduate diplomas of politics, development studies or Asian studies. For more details, contact Dr Susan Blackburn on (03) 9905 2384.

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