Gender Democracy in Southeast Asia

Maggie Tra, founder of SYS Sister Sounds and Hà Nội Community Radio, keeps pushing boundaries to give Vietnamese women more opportunities in the music industry. Navigating a path through DJ-ing in Hanoi, offering workshops and encouragement to others, she hopes the music sector will evolve to see more diverse participation and change perspectives of what women can do.

Ms. Silvia Sartori, Senior Project Manager of ENERGIA, the International Network on Gender and Sustainable Energy, speaks about why gender matters in the energy debate, how a ‘victimization narrative’ inaccurately represents women, and what can be expected from the Gender and Energy Compact launched in September 2021.  

Women are among the hardest hit by the intersecting and overlapping impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through community mobilization and solidarity, women are also finding solutions.

Economists have called COVID-19 an economic SHE-cession because millions of women have exited the workforce to adopt the role of family caregiver. In the Philippines, the COVID-19 induced SHE-cession which is a compounded crisis of health, economy, and governance that has exposed the uneven vulnerabilities of women across different sectors.

On the occasion of International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), the scholar-activist Dédé Oetomo from Indonesia explores the contrast between contemporary homophobia and transphobia and the more tolerant or accepting past and how this can give support to the LGBTIQ+ community.

More than a year after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, the virus continues to ravage the Asia-Pacific with catastrophic human, social, economic, and developmental costs. Many LGBTIQ+ persons experienced increased vulnerability on top of systemic human rights violations and social inequity many currently shoulder as the pandemic places more stress on health systems and social safety nets. 

The internet we have today has become as real as any social spaces we occupy in-person. So much of our lives are integrated digitally now and opting out of the digital space is no longer a choice for us. Today, to be online is to exist and to be seen.

Where the Philippines sits on the gender equality and LGBT rights spectrum can be very confusing for many who are not familiar with the country’s culture. It can feel like being in a time machine that takes you from the 18th century to the 21st in a matter of hours. Sports like volleyball are an equalizing factor, serving as a safe space for the LGBT community.

Visibility and acceptance of lesbians, gays, bisexual, transgender and intersex people (LGBTI) in Southeast Asia have grown in recent years even though some countries continue to criminalise same-sex relations or individuals with different gender expressions. From Myanmar to Indonesia to Timor Leste, even the most difficult environments have given birth to stories of love, hope and humanity. In this report, APCOM sums up the conditions and recent progress for LGBTI in each country and highlights the strategies that have helped to advocate for change.