A Pursuit of "False Civilization"? the State-Led Modernization Projects on Gender Equality in Post-Colonial Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia

IntroductionThis paper is a post-colonial feminist critique of promoting women's rights to gender equality in post-colonial Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. The project employs the concepts of "post-colonialism" and "belated modernity" to dialect that, in the post-colonial era, the state-led modernization projects on gender equality in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia were driven by elites' sense of "belated modernity," instead of being inspired by a local cultural-based "subjectivation" process. Without such a "subjectivation" process, "conscientization (developing consciousness)" (for equality) is impossible to happen to the general public.The thesis statement above is theoretically and empirically worth to explore for the following two reasons. Firstly, with the inspiration of the works of Frantz Fanon (1952) and Paulo Freire (1970) the idea of this study is theoretically based on the thought of that the state-orchestrated promotion of gender equality without the development of general women's awareness of the "oppressed consciousness," the drive behind the promotion (or reform) is only a reflect of the desire of the state/elite to catch-up the "belated modernity." The struggling for "modernity" per se, for post-colonial states' elite, is an issue concerning about the sense of "shame" or "pride" (Taylor 1994; 1997). The searching for "modernity," to a certain extent, is driven by the sense of "shame" for being a citizen of a "belatedly modernized" state. Thus, to "catch up" through "modernization" has been a normal route to restore a nation's dignity. Thus, it is a reasonable doubt that if those "reform-minded" policies are adopted without a local culture-based "subjectivation" process, women in general could not suddenly gain "consciousness" and "enjoy" equality. Furthermore, if the promotion is not rooted in general women's "critical consciousness" or "conscientization," the promotion per se is only a pursuit of "false civilization" (Lee 2009; Ooi 2010). In other words, the promotion is more like "material" or "symbolic" declarations used to show to the world that "I am civilized;" and that I shall be recognized as a "modem and civilized" state given that women's rights or gender equality is a Western-recognized qualification for becoming a modem/ "civilized" nation.Secondly, through an empirical approach, I have conducted a couple of pilot studies on the views and beliefs of working-class Indonesian and Vietnamese women about "ideal womanhood," gender roles, and laws concerning divorce, remarriage and inheritance. The preliminary results from those in-depth interviews show that women living in periphery do not enjoy equal rights as the law grants them this benefit (Lee 2008; 2009; 2010). In other words, based on the preliminary findings, there is a gap between the goal of top-down modernization of gender equality and the local people's views toward that. Thus, it is worth to further explore the truth through advanced studies on this issue.The aims of this study are: (1) to understand the post-colonial process in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia through examining the discourses surrounding the projects of top-down modernization of gender equality; (2) to combine the concept of post-colonialism with the concepts of modernity and belated modernity together to dialect the development of the state-let modernization projects and the nexus of women and family law in postcolonial societies; (3) to advance the knowledge about women studies in post-colonial societies in general and in Southeast Asia in particular.Literature Review and the Theoretical Justification for This StudyLooking into the literature on the studies of Southeast Asian women, the most explored issues are related to the advancement of women's status, which, however, is defined and conceptualized by the elements of Western modernity. Further, the engagement of previous research questions regarding this issue does not go beyond Edward Said's (1979) criticism of Orientalism. …