Mixed blessings: laws, religions and women's rights in the Asia-Pacific Region / edited by Amanda Whiting and Carolyn Evans [Book review]

Abstract

Review of Amanda Whiting and Carolyn Evans' 2006 publication, Mixed Blessings: Laws, Religions and Women's Rights in the Asia-Pacific Region. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. (ISBN 90 04 15141 3). As its sub-title suggests, Mixed Blessings is a series of eight studies that sit inside the intersection of law, religion and women's issues. The contributors - Australian, American and Singaporean come from English-speaking scholarly communities, but their scholarship is brought to bear on law in south-east Asia and the south-western Pacific. The essays are grouped by reference to the dominant religious tradition of the Asia-Pacific countries concerned: Theravada Buddhism (Thailand), Christianity (Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Aotearoa/New Zealand, East Timor), Islam (Indonesia, Brunei) and Confucianism (Singapore), although Li-ann Thio's study on Singapore concentrates on the place of Islam in the city-state. The essayists, mostly legal academics, are all women - not a token male in sight. This may well be Mixed Blessings' strength, and the source of the essayists' characteristic uncertainty about the contribution that religious systems make to the quality of women's lives in the Asia-Pacific. Throughout the collection, there is a strong empathy for the women of the countries studied and, in most, a proved understanding of their position under the 'two powerful regimes' of law and religion. The outcome is, usually, a high standard of scholarship.