The ambiguity of gender equality in the contemporary ACW Work Plan

Sammanfattning: The study examines how gender equality is represented and problematized in the ASEAN Committee on Women Work Plan 2021-2025. The study seeks to explore discourse of gender equality present in the work plan, by employing Carol Bacchi’s “What is the problem represented to be” method. The findings are analyzed through a postcolonial feminist approach to underpin some silences and subject positions, created by the problem representations current in the text. The findings implied that gender equality mostly is a “female issue”, in which “women”, are perceived as both the victims and the agents of change. Furthermore, women are generally defined as one coherent group and factors that differentiate their needs are partly neglected and overlooked. Despite that gender equality is framed as a fundamental value in the action plan, some formulations imply that gender equality is used as a means to achieve other goals of economic nature. Lastly, the recurrent framings of gender (in)equality attributed to male-biased social norms, might risk reinforcing certain gender stereotypes, which eventually could contribute to the policy resulting in being counterproductive in decreasing gender gaps in Southeast Asia.