Everything inside the house … is my job. But outside the house, it’s his job.’ Thai migrant women’s conceptualization of housework, mental load and power

Abstract Book of the 7th Global Conference on Women’s Studies

Year: 2025

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Everything inside the house … is my job. But outside the house, it’s his job.’ Thai migrant women’s conceptualization of housework, mental load and power

Szonja Zoltanfi

ABSTRACT:

Thai migration in Norway is greatly feminized. The transnational arrangements of Thai Norwegian couples fall under the encompassing umbrella term ‘marriage migration’. Overseas (East to West) spatial hypergamy is allegedly understood as an economic bolster and enhancer of social stratum for Thai rural disadvantaged women, Thai-Western marriage migration often being identified with female emancipation and gender liberation. To understand and aid Thai women and their transnational families better, growing academic scrutiny is just as appropriate as necessary. How Thai women understand personal power and power relations with respective to their transnational families? The data collected depends on semi-structured biographical interviews and examines how Thai marriage migrants internalize and make sense of gender concepts, cultural norms and social roles in the transnational family sphere. The present article seeks to answer what impact gender roles and division of household chores play in shaping Thai women’s sense of agency? The findings indicate contending the widespread, predominant presupposition of Thai traditional wives seeking Western spouses, Thai-Norwegian transnational families display a range of of social behaviors associated with gender and how household work tasks and roles are distributed. Nevertheless, tangible gendered power-hierarchy and racial discrimination may intensify the lopsidedness of Thai female migration in Norway.

Keywords: migration, transnational, Thai-Norwegian, family, gender, household