Women’s place in contemporary Lao society: The trials and triumphs of dynamic women
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- SDGs - Outreach
Outreach
In September 2018, Asst. Prof. Dr. Savitri Gadavanij presented a research paper entitled ‘Women’s place in contemporary Lao society: The trials and triumphs of dynamic women’ at ASEAS Conference: Southeast Asia meets global challenges.This presentation is funded by NIDA and the School of Language and Communication.
The 3- day conference was held at the University of Leeds, UK. This paper presentation was part of the session, discourse and development particularly exploring UN SDG goal 5: gender equality. Taking a matrifocal society like Lao as a case study, a fieldwork and interview were conducted at 2 locales: Vientiane and Luang Prabang earlier in the same year. The data reveals that despite the political and social evolutions, Lao women are indeed the ‘nurturer and provider’ of the house. They are also given authority to match the high responsibility: they can make decision about family by themselves. Also being the treasurer of the house, women can be considered the leader of the family. Though being a woman may differ especially in their personal matter, such as their idea of beauty, their taste and political outlook, their role in the family and society do not change. The innate leadership and management skill needed to undergo family burden seem to be the common distinctive traits of Lao women today and many years to come
