A Malayan Girlhood on Parade: Colonial Femininities, Transnational Mobilities and the Girl Guide Movement in British Malaya
(2015) Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century — ISBN: [9781137469908], p. 92 – 112, published
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- Indigenous girls often appear as silent bystanders in the annals of British Malaya. Yet, their active participation in colonial society, visibly articulated through the platforms of youth movements such as the Girl Guides, reveal an alternative perspective of their agency and roles in colonial times. Indeed, institutions such as Guiding provided opportunities for girls in the colony to venture beyond certain established boundaries. Advocates of the movement boasted of its "emancipatory effects", emphasizing its contribution towards a gradual transformation of local traditional cultural norms on girlhood and gender, which had allowed Malayan girls to "come out of seclusion." By analyzing the establishment and the impact of these youth organizations during the colonial era, this chapter seeks to address the following questions: first, how did these movements coordinate their programs to attract members and to convince parents in the colony to allow their children to participate? Were girls and their parents drawn to the exclusivity of these movements, which were deemed elitist due to its connotation of a distinctively European/British and imperialist identity? Did girls themselves view the "elite" status of these movements as a means to obtain greater mobility? How did the movements negotiate their elite identity with respect to their "all-inclusive" approach in encouraging girls of all backgrounds and ethnicities to join? Additionally, what impact did this have in an ethnically and culturally diverse colony such as Malaya? How did this model form of girlhood play out against other contemporary and arguably less "wholesome" forms of girlhood, such as "mui tsais" (Chinese bond maids) child brides and student activists/nationalists, among others? In answering these questions, this chapter aims to fill in the gaps in current scholarship concerning girlhood and gender in British Malaya, as well as to explore the impact of youth movements upon indigenous youth, girlhood and gender in the colonial era.
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Wu, J. (2015). A Malayan Girlhood on Parade: Colonial Femininities, Transnational Mobilities and the Girl Guide Movement in British Malaya. In Richard Ivan Jobs, David M. Pomfret (ed.), Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century (p. p. 92 – 112). Palgrave Macmillan. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/46725