Gender representation in geography: Singapore

Abstract

In Singapore, geography emerged as a strongly masculinist university discipline during the interwar years under colonial rule. Localizing staff hires in the postcolonial era did not immediately produce gender‐balanced staff profiles. Instead, a more equitable gender representation was achieved only in the last decade, following the increasing ‘feminization’ of the student population in the discipline resulting from compulsory National Service for male citizens some two decades earlier and the subsequent ‘drift’ of male students to the hard sciences and engineering. In turn, the current geography curriculum has taken on board a stronger interest in gender issues (including a dedicated gender and geography module) while staff research on gender issues in the context of the Asia‐Pacific region is also making important strides.

Keywords:

• Gender and geography
• patriarchy
• postcolonialism
• university education
• Singapore

Notes

Correspondence address: Brenda Yeoh, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link, Singapore, 117570. Email: [email protected]

The Charter accorded women the power to vote, and equal rights to acquire and hold property, among other legal and civil rights. It predated Singapore's attainment of sovereignty in 1965 and represents a major milestone in the turbulent years leading up to Singapore's independence.

In 1983, concern over rapidly declining fertility rates in Singapore led the former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to bemoan the fact that graduate mothers were having fewer children than less‐educated women, and that “the unintended consequences of changes in our education policy and equal career opportunities for women […] has affected their traditional role as mothers” (Lee, 1983, p. 7). Tax and other incentives given to graduate women in attempts to buck this trend were unpopular and eventually abolished but patriarchal attitudes live on in the policy spheres of housing, health and education. Notably, the quota for female students training to become doctors has been set at one‐third of the cohort, a legislation based on the belief that women tend to stop working to raise children, thereby wasting the state's investment in their medical education (Weiss, 1997; Straits Times, 21 January 2002).

The National University of Singapore began as a medical college in 1905 and has undergone several name changes: Raffles College (1928–1949); University of Malaya (1949–1961); University of Singapore (1962–1980) and finally the National University of Singapore (1980–present).

Much of the information covering the earlier history of the department up to the 1970s was derived from interviews with past and present staff members who were with the department as early as in the 1950s.

E.H.G. Dobby was the first Professor of Geography in the newly formed University of Malaya in 1949.

In 1957, Robert Ho became the first of a string of local Heads of Department.

These women included Margaret Handby, Jean Carter, F.E.S. Alexander and Alice Hill.

The number of graduate students in the department has been generally low since the 1950s, usually not more than one or two each year. This situation, however, is changing and the number has slowly risen in the last few years. In 2002, the department had 15 graduate students, of whom nine are male and six female.

As Mackinnon & Brooks (2001, p. 8) note, “Universities have been identified by a range of governmental, public and private institutions and corporate organizations as centrally positioned for the effective delivery of the knowledge economy. While tertiary sector institutions have always understood their raison d'être to be knowledge production and learning, their ‘repositioning’ as essential to the well‐being of corporate success and the driving force of economic change has been something of a ‘rude awakening’.”

The reasons behind the policy change have not been publicly articulated but it may be assumed that an equalization of benefits is an important factor in the recruitment of expatriate staff. According to a former female expatriate staff member of the department, “the difference in benefits for spouses was significant enough for some women to make the decision NOT to apply for a position at NUS” (Peta Sanderson, personal communication, 22 February 2002).

In the public sector, male officers are entitled to medical benefits for their non‐working spouse and children, whereas only women officers who are divorced or widowed receive such benefits for their children, and then only if they are solely dependent on her. The state argues that this policy is consistent with “preserving the male as head of households” to ensure “familial stability” (Kong & Chan, 2000, p. 510).

This does not mean that gender equality has been reached, for as Oakley (2001, p. xii) points out, the production, valorization and management of knowledge are gendered enterprises with discriminatory effects even where written rules appear ‘neutral’ simply because “women ‘fail’ to gain inclusion because they are judged in systems set up by men reflecting male standards and criteria”.

Personal communication, 9 February 2002. Ann Brooks was then Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Massey University, New Zealand.

When completed, the research will be published as a book entitled Academic and Corporate Work Identities and Organizational Change in Singapore and Hong Kong (Hong Kong University Press).

Personal communication, 9 February 2002.

In 1987, a course on the Sociology of Gender (renamed ‘Gender Studies’) was initiated at the Department of Sociology. Presently, there are a number of gender‐related modules in a wide range of humanities and social science departments ranging from Political Science to Theatre Studies.

This is somewhat in contrast with the Anglo‐American scene where it had been noted that the growing presence of women in the labour force and the contradictions that women experience in straddling the public and private spheres provided some of the initial impetus in the late 1970s for geographic interest in ‘how the other half lives’ (Tivers, 1978; Bowlby et al. 1989; McDowell, 1989).

Since then, the module (renamed Gender, Space and Place) has been taught at one point or another by all except two of the slate of female human geographers in the department. Thus far, no male has taught the module. It should also be noted that the module was approved when the department was under Teo Siew Eng, the only female Head.

The module attracts 40–80 students each year, of whom the vast majority are female students.

This was a thesis examining women's construction of images of fear as a spatial expression of patriarchy.

These ‘invisible threads’ that bind the different spheres of our lives cannot be underestimated. A postcard sent by one female geographer to another puts it pithily: “I wanted to go out and save the world but—I couldn't find a baby sitter”.

It should be noted, however, that—up to now—self‐consciousness exists at a mainly individualized level. There is as yet no clearly defined space within the university environment where “women can gain visibility as individuals and as collective actors” (Sassen, 1998, p. 99). If ‘success’ is measured in terms of the extent to which we have been “mobilizing our own” and “creating feminist space(s)” in institutional terms (Falconer Al‐Hindi, 2000, p. 701), then it is clear that there is still a long road ahead.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brenda S. a. Yeoh

Correspondence address: Brenda Yeoh, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link, Singapore, 117570. Email: [email protected]