| ID | 179128 |
| Title Proper | Creating modern women |
| Other Title Information | the kitchen in postcolonial Singapore, 1960–90 |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Chan, Ying-Kit |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | This article examines the modern kitchen as a technological artefact and a mechanism through which the postcolonial Singaporean state and agents of household consumerism such as advertisers, retailers, home economists, and social scientists constructed the image of a modern Singaporean woman. By revealing how the female consumer-cum-homemaker became a symbol of material success and middle-class status in Fordist Singapore, the article highlights two types of domestication: the subordination of women to the patriarchal imperatives of family and nation, and the transformation of hard successes in the economy into soft comforts in the kitchen. This article suggests that although the state had narrowed the gap between popular expectations for improved living standards and its ability to fulfil them, it also unwittingly enmeshed definitions of femininity, womanhood, and female citizenship in a series of contradictions and tensions that had implications for contemporary Singaporean society.
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| `In' analytical Note | Journal of South East Asian Studies Vol. 51, No.3; Sep 2020: p.414 - 434 |
| Journal Source | Journal of South East Asian Studies 2020-12 51, 3 |
| Key Words | 1960–90 ; Creating Modern Women ; kitchen in Postcolonial Singapore |