‘Men are butterflies, women are hindlimbs of an elephant’: Thai women’s gendered being in transnational spaces

Abstract

The numerical dominance of women within the Thai population in Belgium raises the question of how gender, as a category of difference and as a norm, influences Thai women’s decision to enter in a ‘mixed’ marriage, to migrate, and to ‘do family’ in their transnational social spaces. Drawing from a qualitative study of Thai women in ‘mixed’ couples in Belgium from 2012 to 2015, this article addresses this question using as conceptual points of departure the metaphor ‘men are butterflies, women are hindlimbs of an elephant’. It unveils how gendered ideologies in Thailand and in Belgium intersect and shape Thai women’s subjectivity and agency. On the one hand, the ‘men are butterflies’ metaphor reflects the gendered double standard of sexual morality in Thailand and suggests explanations for Thai women’s marriage with Belgian men, for their migration to Belgium, and for the break-up, in some cases, of their mixed marriage. On the other hand, the saying ‘women are hindlimbs of an elephant’ uncovers Thai women’s contributions to their families, societies, and nations, as well as the way they cope with the overlapping social expectations interacting on them as daughters, mothers, and citizens.

Keywords:

• Agency
• gendered being
• ‘mixed’ marriage
• subjectivity
• thai migrant women
• transnational social spaces

Acknowledgements

The first version of this paper was presented at the workshop ‘Transnational migration, family, and (health) care’ on 1 May 2018 at the University of Sussex (UK). I thank Sarah Scuzzarello and Paul Statham for this opportunity to share my research results. I am grateful to the study informants for sharing with me their family stories and aspirations, as well as to the anonymous reviewers whose constructive comments helped me reinforce the quality of my paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The study from which I drew the data in the present paper was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship (2012-2015) of the Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS) in Belgium.

Notes on contributors

Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot

Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot is a tenured research associate of the Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS) in Belgium and senior lecturer (maîtresse d’enseignement) at the Laboratory of Anthropology of Contemporary Worlds (LAMC) of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). Her ongoing study examines the contextual mobility of Belgian-Asian couples, a research programme supported by an installation grant (crédit de fonctionnement) and by a Research Project grant (PDR T.0094.20) of the F.R.S.-FNRS, as well as by a ‘Concerted Research Action (ARC) Consolidation’ grant from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. Her recent publications include the edited Special Issue ‘Transnational perspectives on intersecting experiences: gender, social class and generation among Southeast Asian migrants and their families’ (with Kyoko Shinozaki, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 2017) and the edited volume International marriages and marital citizenship. Southeast Asian women on the move (with Gwénola Ricordeau, Routledge 2017).