Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Keynote Address
- 1 Legal Mechanisms for Protecting Women's Rights: Examples from Southeast Asia
- 2 The Women's Charter, 1961: Where We Were Coming From and How We Got There
- 3 Significant Provisions in the Women's Charter
- 4 A Lawyer's Perspective on How Divorcees View the Women's Charter
- 5 “The Morning After”: Understanding and Exploring the Psychosocial Impact of the Women's Charter on Families Experiencing Domestic Violence
- 6 Epilogue: Some Thoughts on Protecting Women's Rights in the Family and Beyond
- Index
2 - The Women's Charter, 1961: Where We Were Coming From and How We Got There
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Keynote Address
- 1 Legal Mechanisms for Protecting Women's Rights: Examples from Southeast Asia
- 2 The Women's Charter, 1961: Where We Were Coming From and How We Got There
- 3 Significant Provisions in the Women's Charter
- 4 A Lawyer's Perspective on How Divorcees View the Women's Charter
- 5 “The Morning After”: Understanding and Exploring the Psychosocial Impact of the Women's Charter on Families Experiencing Domestic Violence
- 6 Epilogue: Some Thoughts on Protecting Women's Rights in the Family and Beyond
- Index
Summary
In “The Tasks Ahead” — their manifesto for the June 1959 Singapore General Election — the People's Action Party (PAP) had promised to legislate monogamous marriage and to make other radical improvements to the status of women. By April 1960, the Women's Charter Bill (No. 81 of 1960) was presented to the Legislative Assembly for debate. The bill covered not only family law, but also the protection of young women from exploitation as prostitutes.
The Bill was presented to the Legislative Assembly in truly stirring words:
We promised this legislation to the electorate and we were moved to do so by deep and profound conviction as to how a good society should be regulated.
— Dr Goh Keng Swee (Singapore Legislative Assembly Debates [SLAD] 12 1960, p. 480)This Women's Charter before the House to-day will find a place as a permanent monument and milestone in the history of the social struggle for the betterment of the world.
— Dr Lee Siew Choh (Singapore Legislative Assembly Debates [SLAD] 12 1960, p. 454)In our inhuman, semi-colonial, semi-feudalistic society, the tragedies of women were very common. Women in our society have been like pieces of meat, put on the table for men to slice … We will liberate women from the hands of the oppressors.
— Madam Chan Choy Siong (speaking in Mandarin) (Singapore Legislative Assembly Debates [SLAD] 12 1960, p. 443)We have thought it important that we consider this as something outside the ordinary stream of legislation, we consider it to be in the real sense of the word a Charter for the women of our State.
— Minister K.M. Byrne (Singapore Legislative Assembly Debates [SLAD] 12 1960, p. 480)Before the Charter
With good cause the Minister for Labour and Law, K.M. Byrne, in presenting the bill, had described prior legislation relating to women and children as “spread so widely throughout our legislation that it requires the training and experience of a lawyer, to find one's way through” (SLAD 12, 1960, p. 481).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Singapore Women's CharterRoles, Responsibilities and Rights in Marriage, pp. 43 - 78Publisher: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak InstitutePrint publication year: 2011