SINGLEHOOD & THE STATE : THE CASE OF SINGLE MALAY GRADUATE WOMEN

Abstract

The single Malay graduate woman is located in two frameworks: Malay culture and the larger Singapore society. Both have conceptualised women as complementary to men and not fully independent persons. Consequently, women are not "absolute individuals" but rather are only "relative individuals". At the same time, both these frameworks emphasise marriage and maternity. Faced with such frameworks, in this thesis I explored how single women understood and constructed their 'alternative' single lives and dealt with the pressures towards marriage and maternity. I am thus interested in their expressions of agency because while these frameworks may pose limitations, they do not foreclose in any deterministic way. As such, these women cannot be seen as conscious resistors but rather as trying to make the best of their circumstances.

Singlehood is also a highly politicised issue in Singapore where the government periodically reminds singles, particularly single graduate women, to marry. With the recent attention on single Malay graduate women, I also explored the possible reasons for the state's concern with this group. I suggest that this concern is not so much out of magnanimity as it is related to the concerns of the social problems in the larger Malay society.