forbidden from participating in special religious ceremonies and entering sacred
sites organized by men (Srivanichpoom 2004 ; Kawanami 1996 :74–75).
During the Proto-Globalization period (1600–1768), thesakdinasystem^1 was
introduced reinforcing the lower status of females (Baker and Phongpaichit 2005 :
16 – 17). Females in the lower class were subjected to the sakdina lords. It was a
tradition that the royals had many wives to ensure the production of enough sons to
assist with administrative tasks and enough daughters to build marriage networks
within the elite. According to Wyatt ( 1984 ), Ayutthaya kings had many wives.
During the Globalization period (1768–1946), the hierarchical culture was
strengthened by King Rama V’s modernization reform. Bureaucracy established in
this period replaced the sakdina system from the Ayutthaya period, but the con-
tinued presence of a patriarchal society and polygamy ensured the retention of this
status quo in practice (Baker and Phongpaichit 2005 ). Male supremacy went so far
that females and children in the middle and lower class were treated as goods before
- Evidence was the Act of 1868 which stopped males from selling their wives
and parents from selling their children (Achawanijkul and Tharawan 2005 : 272).
According to Formoso ( 2000 : 65), King Rama VI decreed a polygamy forbid-
ding Act in 1921 but it was not imposed rigorously. An Act to endorse monogamy
was approved some time later in 1935 when a group of middle-class females asked
for an equal chance to education and monogamy (Achawanijkul and Tharawan
2005 : 335). However, the monogamy value seemed to lose ground to the hybri-
dized form of sexuality emerging in this Globalization period increasing acceptance
of having sex with sex workers. As polygamy for males was still accepted, while
females had to stay chaste before marriage, males turned to a third party: sex
workers (Ghosh 2002 ). Ghosh ( 2002 :34–35) argues that prostitution was officially
mentioned for thefirst time in Thai history during the reign of King Rama I when
prostitution and brothels were taxed, a levy called“tax for the road”. This implied
that prostitution was treated and accepted as a profession. Jeffrey ( 2002 : 11)
explains the sex industry was initially booming after the complete abolishment of
slavery by King Rama V in 1905 when the former slave wives entered prostitution
to survive. The number of sex workers was on the rise after the Great Depression in
1936 (Jeffrey 2002 : 15). Klausner ( 1997 :67–69) and Sivaraksa ( 2001 :36–37)
blame the Thai patriarchal system as a stimulus for prostitution. Poor young Thai
males can get free education and accommodation from a temple up to university
level and can afterward disrobe to work as laity, whereas poor young females have
no institution support and end up being sex workers.
During the Contemporary Globalization (1946–Present) period, patriarchal
values continue. Eoseewong ( 1992 :41–42), a famous Thai scholar, explains that in
the past Thai females played an important role in the production of the households
such as working in paddyfields, harvesting, sending food to the males who
(^1) The sakdina system was the hierarchical structure of service nobility codified in lists of official
posts, each with its specific title, honorific and rank measured in areas of land they were allowed to
possess (Baker and Phongpaichit 2005 : 15; Ongsakul 2005 : 115; Servaes and Malikhao 1989 : 33;
Servaes 1999 : 211; Srisootarapan 1976 ; Suwannarit 2003 :9–12).
40 3 Violence Against Thai Females