Changing Lives

Thirteen women's studies pioneers from eleven Asian countries narrate their individual passages into feminist consciousness and the monumental effect of women's studies on their private and professional lives. Each woman's odyssey moves against the backdrop of her country's social and political systems, as well as through the dailiness of her family life. In their efforts to balance demanding careers-as anthropologists, economists, psychologists, and even as a member of parliament-with "normal" family lives, these women all come to realize that their husbands experienced no such difficulties. They regard women's studies as a key strategy for changing women's lives, just as it has changed theirs.

In Changing Lives, women's studies link these stories, although the individual narratives are extremely diverse"

Aurora Javate de Dios worked as a political activist in the Philippines in the 1970s, then married and reared three children before becoming a women's studies pionerr;

Economist Fareeha Zafar worked to establish the first women's trade union in Pakistan in the early 1970s and to found the Women's Action Forum, and women's studies in Pakistan;

After Liang Jun of China, at 40, married, with two children and an academic career, attended a lecture by Li Xiaojiang she suddenly saw a "lighthouse on a dark sea".

Contributors: Noemi Alindogan-Medina (Philippines); Fanny M. Cheung (Hong Kong); Aurora Javate Dios (Philippines); Cho Hyoung (South Korea); Liang Jun (China); Malavika Karlekar (India); Nora Lan-hung Chiang [Huang] (Taiwan); Yasuko Murumatsu (Japan); Thanh-Dam Truong (Vietnam); Aline K. Wong (Singapore); Li Xiaojiang (China); Fareeha Zafar (Pakistan)