Interweaving the public and the private: women's responses to population policy shifts in Singapore

Abstract

The private and the public are often deemed as a ‘natural’ and universal division which models social life into a domestic sphere for women and a public/work sphere for men. The shift in Singapore's population policy from anti‐ to pro‐natalism is used to explore gendered responses with the aim of deconstructing this dichotomy. The paper provides support for the interpenetration rather than division of spheres, and shows that macro‐socioeconomic contexts are critical to redefining social values which may ultimately affect the coalescence of public ideology and private freedoms. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Re-Producing Citizens: Gender, Employment, and Work-Family Balance Policies in Singapore

“…Given that previous research has repeatedly found that Singaporeans treat childbearing as a "private" and "personal" decision (Graham, 1995;Teo & Yeoh, 1999), snowball sampling is an appropriate research strategy. As Berg (2009: 51) notes, snowball sampling is "particularly popular among researchers interested in studying .…”

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Defamilisation of Twenty-Two Countries: Its Implications for the Study of East Asian Welfare Regime

“…The four tiger economies provide a number of examples of these changes. In Singapore, the total fertility rate dropped from 3.03 to 1.42 in the period 1970–2001 (Teo and Yeoh, 1999; Wong and Yeoh, 2003). In Hong Kong, the percentage of never-married women in the age group 40–44 increased from 3 per cent to 16 per cent in the period 1981–2006.…”

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“…The Board introduced a range of incentives and controls, collectively known as the ''Stop at Two'' policy, to reduce the fertility rate. Several authors have catalogued these measures (e.g., Graham 1995;Palen 1986;Teo and Yeoh 1999). They included:…”

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