Asian Women Persist: Anthropologists Answer Feminist Questions

‌

Representations of Asian women are mostly polarized. Images of women in hijabs or middle-class housewives who comply with the combination of patriarchy and capitalist system on one hand, and ‘helicopter moms’ as the embodiment of neoliberal motherhood who devote themselves to class reproduction with all their family’s capital, or sexual objects with extremized sexuality on the other. These images represent the ‘compliance’ of Asian women by exaggerating it. Meanwhile, progressive Asian women elites with leadership in global institutions are featured in the media, highlighting how they break the structural oppression and stereotypes. Do these representations depict the reality of Asian women well? What kind of lives do Asian women live today?