GENDERING THE GREENING OF SINGAPORE: INVISIBLE WOMEN IN THE GARDEN CITY NARRATIVE

Abstract

social and cultural milieu of the late 1960s to 1980s. My thesis responds by highlighting gendered understandings within an already familiar narrative of greening the nation. To that end, I study Singapore’s Garden City endeavour from the late 1960s to the 1980s, as well as the retelling of this chapter of the Singapore Story beyond. I assume a gendered reading of the greening of Singapore and its retelling. More specifically, I attempt to write several key women back into the narrative, as well as interrogate the masculinized nature of exerting control and domination over the natural environment, such that women were unable to find their voice within the national narrative. In doing so, I hope to shed more light on this male-led gatekeeping of controlling the natural world as a tool to discipline society - one which only men seemed to be given the right to wield.