Last Friday, PM Prayut Chan-o-cha made another insensitive verbal blunder. You may say, "Hey, Pornchai, aren't you used to this by now?" but I would argue that this latest (and hopefully last one) merits a response from yours truly, delivered with the utmost respect as always.
You see, Uncle Tu gave a speech on "Female Power in Driving the Country Forward" at Challenger Hall, Muang Thong Thani. He praised women for their three main roles that they have to shoulder.
In gist, he said, "As a man, I would like to give praise to women who have many and important roles. First, their duty as wives. Second, their duty as mothers to their children. Third, their duty to earn supplementary income for their families. Therefore, we have to realise and sympathise that mothers and women, in general, carry these responsibilities."
He also told them to give themselves a round of applause and urged families to love each other very much so we can have a peaceful society since happiness in families will spread out to the society.
At the risk of sounding like a social justice warrior snowflake, I would say that the views expressed in his speech are outdated even by the usual gender binary standards. Was the writer of his speech born during the Ayutthaya era?
His speech sounds like a backhanded compliment, at best. He would like to pay a compliment to women but yet rigidly define them based on their roles as wives, mothers and supporters. When he nonchalantly said that the third role of women is to make the supplementary income for their families, it must feel like a slap to many modern women who make their way in the world. It implies that they could never be equal to or more than their spouses or partners.
I know many women in real life who fend for themselves, raise their children as single parents and become more successful than their husbands. Mind you, I have nothing against the traditional Thai families where men are the front legs of an elephant and women are the hind legs. But that shouldn't be the preferred role of Thai women or the official view of what Thai women should be. Enough with mansplaining of what women should be or do.
And, of course, I would never expect Uncle Tu to be woke enough to know what the "A" in LGBTQIA+ stands for but at least we should be able to expect our leader to hold viewpoints that fit with the contemporary world. Imagine how his speech would be received if he delivered it on an international stage.
By ignoring women who are independent and don't value themselves based on the roles of wife and mother, he does the opposite of female empowerment.