The expectations, presumptions, and institutionalised norms for mothers to be special and unique are irrational, unjust and harmful to society.

Mothers are not special.

They do not have superhuman powers to create more hours in a day. They cannot free themselves of societal constraints to act as independent saviours. They do not raise children in social vacuums.

Pop culture and public policies conspire to frame mothers as extraordinary, as people — indeed, women — who possess special qualities such that they can be relied on to do things other people are not expected to.

The focus in public policy, for example, is on mothers as dominant players in children’s lives. There are lengthy maternity leave, versus insignificant paternity leave, and a range of tax reliefs only for working mothers. These compel us to think of and experience the caregiving of children as something that mothers are uniquely positioned to do.

Men who want to and do play roles as caregivers are unsupported and unrecognised; women as grandmothers, teachers, and paid caregivers are symbolically relegated to being secondary and inferior substitutes.

The expectations, presumptions, and institutionalised norms for mothers to be special and unique are irrational, unjust and harmful to society.

They create undue limitations on women as mothers, while depriving men as fathers both symbolic and material access to be genuine caregivers to children. They send the message to our youth — both young women and men — that the only sort of family life they can expect is one where they have to suppress some aspect of their varied capabilities and aspirations to fit into narrow gendered boxes. They obscure various differences that exist between women as mothers — socioeconomic circumstances and marital status, for example — and therefore their varying advantages and struggles in relation to the ideal of “supermoms”.

Finally, in framing mothers as ideal caregivers, they undercut the important roles played by various non-parent adults — teachers, babysitters, grandparents — in children’s lives.

Focus on kids’ needs, not mums’ roles

It is entirely within the realm of possibility to alter public policy orientations in ways that would disrupt these unhealthy dynamics. The first step is for policy to focus broadly on children’s needs rather than narrowly on mothers’ roles.

The economist Nancy Folbre has argued compellingly for viewing children as public goods. Whether or not we have children and however we feel individually about wanting them, Professor Folbre points out, children grow up to become participating members of society. Their health, knowledge, and civic orientations invariably shape the society we grow old in.

As such, it is our collective interest and shared responsibility to enable children’s care and growth. Mothers should not be the only ones with either the responsibility or privilege to raise children. Instead, a whole range of adults — fathers, teachers, grandparents, babysitters — should be acknowledged and supported as legitimate and important caregivers.

In countries such as Sweden and Norway, the implementation of this child-centred approach has been in the form of publicly-funded leave for parents regardless of gender and marital status. There is also publicly-funded support for a range of institutional and home-based care for children regardless of their parents’ socioeconomic and employment status.

The outcome has been more egalitarian divisions of labour within the home; a greater range of life paths and arrangements around work and family; more equality of opportunity among children and less pronounced societal inequality; and greater respect for domestic, care and pedagogical labour. The universality of support also breeds a stronger sense of citizens as having collective responsibilities and obligations in the well-being of their shared future. As it turns out, when support for caregiving extends beyond the narrow lens of mothers as being and doing everything, everyone can lead better lives.

In Singapore, we as a society know that mothers have limited capacities like everyone else in dealing with the various demands and challenges in everyday life. Increasingly, we also appear to know that not all mothers have the same resources and advantages to fulfil children’s needs.

Public policy needs to catch up with these sentiments.

This Mother’s Day, let us celebrate motherhood by recognising the ordinariness of mothers. We can change our social conditions such that mothers do not have to be super in order to be good.

Teo You Yenn is an AWARE Board Member, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Nanyang Technological University, and author of the book Neoliberal Morality in Singapore: How family policies make state and society. This article was first published in Today on 6 May 2013. Read the published version here.

JOB SCOPE

Reporting to the Executive Director, the Communications Executive is responsible for:

• Designing, writing and editing communications materials, including website, newsletter, collaterals, emailers, presentation materials, social media, press releases, letters, articles, quotes, speeches, interviews;
• Website maintenance
• AWARE Facebook page maintenance
• Media monitoring
• Monthly media report to the Board
• Media liaising
• Assisting the Executive Director with media queries
• Managing volunteers involved in writing, newsletter or website content management assignments
• Seek and create opportunities for AWARE to publicise its services and advocate on issues in appropriate media
• Assist to implement the communications strategy for AWARE’s advocacy and educational campaigns

VALUED EXPERIENCE AND COMPETENCIES

• Bachelor’s degree or diploma
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Familiarity with content management systems
• Good eye for design and familiarity with use of photo-editing software
• Ardent user of social media
• Independent and able to work in a fast-paced environment
• Able to multi-task, prioritize and organise within timelines
• Creative and dynamic with good interpersonal skills
• Believes in gender equality and has a keen interest in women’s issues and social justice

HOW TO APPLY

Send a letter and your CV including the names and contact numbers of 2 referees to:

Corinna Lim
Executive Director
AWARE Centre
Block 5, #01-22, Dover Crescent
Singapore 130005

Email: hr@aware.org.sg

Apply by June 3.

Three women are faced with different threats – at home, in the office, and at a party. When familiar environments turn hostile and seemingly harmless situations escalate, what choices are they left with?

This forum theatre piece was created by a team of volunteers from all walks of life in Singapore, who came forward to share their stories of violence, oppression and vulnerability.  In a powerful workshop led by theatre practitioner Li Xie, the volunteers molded compelling characters who mirrored their struggles, their society. Your society.

‘Just A Bad Day’ promises to be a stimulating encounter. Through this intimate performance, we hope to provoke thought and discussion on the less tangible forms of violence against women that continue to be a reality in Singapore.

Come and listen to these experiences, share your perspectives and reconsider your assumptions about gender roles, norms and violence against women. And maybe you will discover possibilities – areas you where you can make change in your own life.

EVENT DETAILS:

Title: Just A Bad Day

Date: 22nd June

Time: 3pm (matinee) and 8pm (click on the showtimes to purchase your tickets)

Venue: The Substation Theatre, 45 Armenian Street, Singapore 179936

Ticket Price: $5 (all proceeds will go towards the We Can! End All Violence Against Women Campaign)

Presented by We Can! Singapore, produced by Drama Box.

Directed by: Li Xie

Devised by: Rachel Chung, Navin Elankovan, Fairuz Atiqah, Sherlin Giri, Jasmine Hu, Eqtaffaq Hussain, Joanna Lee, Kirubaashini Kanesan, Lim Wei Klinsmann, Wendy Low, Raksha Mahtani, Mark Ng, Yanchun Ong, Elena Siew, Emmanuel Soo, Jillian Tan, Keith Tan, Lupin Tan Yong Kang, Rita Teo, Ting Wei Chang, Erina Wong & Quen Wong.

Supported by: The Substation and the family of Raj Verma.

Click here to purchase tickets for the matinee show.

Click here to purchase tickets for the evening show.

 For more information, write to sahar@aware.org.sg.

AWARE is proud to bring the global ‘We Can!’ campaign (short for We Can End All Violence Against Women) to Singapore, making us the 16th country to join the worldwide movement against gender violence.

With the tagline ‘Change starts with me’, the Singapore campaign uses interactive theatre and intimate workshops to reach out to individual Change Makers, as well as community groups, provoking thought and discussion on the less obvious forms of violence against women in our society.

The heart of the campaign is an interactive workshop which explores how individuals can create a violence-free society where overt and subtle forms of violence, domination and control ebb away. The workshop examines how each of us can contribute to changing the status quo by taking small actions in our everyday lives to overcome inequality, injustice and discrimination.

Who is a Change Maker?

Change Makers are people like YOU who believe that we all have a role to play in ending violence against women. The Change Maker Workshop is a novel forum where people from all walks of life meet and explore ideas, share experiences and discuss existing patterns of belief in our society that tolerate violence against women. Through open and constructive discussion in a safe space, they discover possibilities and areas where they can make change – as individuals, and as a collective.

To be a Change Maker, you must:

• Take the Change Maker Pledge:

“To end violence against women, I embrace a violence-free life and will encourage others to do the same. I believe that all people have the right to live lives free of violence.”

• Attend a Change Maker Orientation Workshop (FREE). All workshops will take place at the AWARE Centre. There are workshops on every 2nd Wednesday and every 4th Saturday of each month. Lunch will be provided for the Saturday workshops. The upcoming workshop dates are:                                                                                                    -
  • May 25th (Sat): 10.30am-12.30pm
  • June 12th (Wed): 7.30pm-9.30pm
  • June 29th (Sat)): 10.30am-12.30pm

Click here to register for a workshop and be a Change Maker. 

Note: Each workshop can take a maximum of 15 participants, so register soon for your preferred date. If you can’t make it to any of the abovementioned dates, no worries. Just select the “keep me informed of future dates” option on the registration form.

Through this campaign, we are trying to reach out not just to women, but to men and youth (16 and above). So if you’re coming down to the workshop, feel free to bring your family and friends.

More About the Campaign:

The objectives of We Can! Singapore are to:

• Shake up social attitudes and beliefs that tolerate violence against women
• Join hands with various communities willing to work towards a violence-free society
• Reach out to individual Change Makers who embrace a violence-free life and encourage others to do the same

Using the medium of art, performance, sports, community networks, media and pop culture, We Can! Singapore hopes to reach out to 1, 000 Change Makers over the course of two years, 2013 – 2015. The campaign focuses on the underlying causes of gender violence – unequal gender power, norms, stereotypes and discrimination – and aims to start each individual on a journey of reflection towards challenging these cultural beliefs.

To find out more about We Can! Singapore, please visit www.wecansingapore.com or write to wecan@wecansingapore.com.

Get involved! Sign the pledge and come down for our next workshop. You can sign up for a workshop here.

No one should be manipulated into becoming a parent through misinformation and fear. On this and every Mother’s Day, let us celebrate women’s right to be mothers by choice.

On Mother’s Day, we celebrate those who have chosen to be mothers and enjoy motherhood. To have or not to have children – that is a right that everyone should have. Exercising this right is particularly important for women as they are the ones who become pregnant and give birth, with consequences for their health and future.

In 1994, Singapore and 178 other governments adopted the Programme of Action that resulted from the International Conference on Population and Development. As stated in that Programme of Action, implicit in the freedom to decide if, when and how often to have children is “the right of men and women to be informed and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice.”

Both the World Health Organisation and the United Nations cite information accessibility as a key component of the right to health. We can make the right decisions for ourselves only if we have accurate information about our bodies and our health. Yet we encounter the dissemination of harmful myths and inaccurate information by some groups that purport to provide support for pregnant women. This results in people making major decisions for their bodies and their lives, based on wrong information.

A Straits Times article (19 March 2013) recently mentioned several services that supposedly assist those facing unwanted pregnancies. It is disconcerting that the website of one of these services claims, without qualifiers, that abortion is not safe and that the use of birth control is like eating junk food.

AWARE’s concern deepened when several callers who sought the advice of this service informed us of the wrongful information they had received when they called this hotline. They were told by the service that abortion is always medically invasive. There was no mention of non-invasive methods, such as oral medication or injections.

Another inaccuracy conveyed to callers was that abortion makes it difficult for women to get pregnant in the future. In fact, based on analysis of 11,814 pregnancies in women with previous abortions, a 2007 study in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded that a medical abortion (i.e. abortion by means of medication) causes no adverse health effects on subsequent pregnancies.

The service also claims, wrongly, that pregnancy is risk-free. This contradicts a 2012 study published in Obstetrics and Gynecology that found that legally induced abortion is markedly safer than childbirth, with the risk of death associated with childbirth approximately 14 times higher than than with abortion.

The callers to this hotline were then warned that abortion always leads to depression. This has been disproved by a large-scale 2011 Danish study of 365,550 teenagers and women, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, which shows that having an abortion does not increase the risk of mental health problems.

One caller was told that teenage parents can still achieve their personal goals while raising a child without support from their family and partner. There was no mention of the significant personal sacrifices that teenage parents often make in the form of truncated education, lost career opportunities, pervasive discrimination, social stigma and reduced psychological well-being, especially when they do not have the necessary support and resources for childcare.

Is such misinformation the result of ignorance? Or is it motivated by an agenda that may be neither transparent nor aligned with the values or interests of the women who seek the help of such services? If it is the latter, what would be the intended effect of such misinformation? Is it to scare women into becoming mothers?

Unwanted pregnancies do not just happen to teenagers. They also happen to those who are married, to those who already have children, and to those who are victims of sexual violence. All who find themselves in this position must have access to accurate information about their choices so that they can make the best decision for themselves.

Happy mothers are willing mothers. No one should be manipulated into becoming a parent through misinformation and fear. On this and every Mother’s Day, let us celebrate women’s right to be mothers by choice.

James Wong, Shimona Leong and Jolene Tan are volunteers at AWARE. Vivienne Wee is the Research and Advocacy Director at AWARE.

AWARE thanks the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple for its generous donation in support of  AWARE’s  Support Services, Sexual Assault Befrienders Services, and  the We Can! End All Violence Against Women Campaign.

The Temple, located at Waterloo Street and buiit in 1884, is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Singapore, having been built in 1884. It is well known for its philanthropic work and has been an active contributor to social, educational causes and arts in Singapore.

Since 2008, the Temple has contributed substantially to  the operations and development of  AWARE’s Support Services. This financial support has enabled our Support Services to grow its staff  and volunteer capacity to increase its outreach to help more women and their families.

Compared to 2007, the number of calls received by the Helpline has increased by 73.41 per cent; counselling cases have increased five-fold and Legal Clinic cases have doubled. The funding has not only allowed us to increase our resources to address demand, but has also improved the quality of Support Services.

Generous donations from the Temple have supported AWARE in its efforts to reach out to the Chinese speaking community. Through the introduction of its first Mandarin Helpline training course, we now have an increased pool of Mandarin speaking Helpliners to meet the needs of our Chinese speaking callers.

This year, the funds will be used to improve existing Support Services facilities, and to increase the capacity of the Sexual Assault Befriender’s Service (SABS). Funds will also be channeled towards the We Can! End All Violence against Women Campaign. This campaign marks the 22nd anniversary of our Helpline and is AWARE’s major initiative to end violence against women by changing the social norms and attitudes that perpetuate gender violence.

At this roundtable, Bioethics Legal Group for Reproductive Issues in Singapore (BELRIS) will discuss its findings from two surveys conducted from 2012 to 2013. The findings were published in the ‘Report – Survey Conducted to Evaluate the Position on Elective Oocyte Freezing in Singapore’. It will reveal the positions of Singaporeans, and particularly, Singaporean women’s views on elective oocyte freezing in Singapore. The Report is suggestive of a positive attitude towards elective egg freezing and provides a snapshot of current Singaporean attitudes in the context of recent media coverage on the issue of reproduction in Singapore.

EVENT DETAILS

Date: Thursday, 16^th May 2013

Time: 7.30pm

Venue: AWARE Centre, Block 5 Dover Crescent #01-22 S’pore (130005)

About the speaker:

Hapreet K. Bedi, is Executive Director of BELRIS, an independent, non-profit organization that aims to provide measured, well-balanced research, dialogue and opinion on various reproductive technologies and treatments in Singapore. She is a Singaporean with a Masters in Medical Law (with Merit) from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, U.K., and a Juris Doctorate from Northeastern University School of Law, Boston, U.S.A. She also has achieved her Bachelor of Arts, with Majors in Economics and International Relations, graduating Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Sweet Briar College, Virginia, U.S.A.

To register for this event, please click here.

Mark the date now in your calendar and keep the afternoon free. Besides finding out more about AWARE’s activities in 2012, this will also be a great chance to  catch up with old friends and make new ones.

A formal Notice about the AGM will be issues to members at least three weeks before the AGM. If you have not renewed your membership yet, please renew your membership now by logging in using the sidebar on the right.

No new membership applications will be accepted from May 11 to June 1. We will resume accepting applications on June 2, after the AGM. Please note that this does not apply to membership renewals. Renewals will still be accepted in this period.

For full details, please check the Notice that you will receive by email or post.

To confirm your attendance at the AGM, please RSVP here.

If you have any questions about the AGM, please write to aware@aware.org.sg.

We look forward to seeing you at the AGM.

EVENT DETAILS

Date: June 1, 2013

Time: 2pm

Place: AWARE Centre

THIS EVENT IS OPEN TO MEMBERS ONLY.