Ego trumps equity

In 1996, Nominated Member of Parliament, Kanwaljit Soin, made a valiant attempt to equalise the alimony law between men and women. PAP members of parliament either kept quiet or resisted. The Minister for Community Development, Abdullah Tarmugi, could not offer anything but the lamest excuse why he would not accept her proposal which might even have saved taxpayer money.

It's interesting to revisit this episode as it reveals a lot about the mindset of our ruling party and government.

The transcript of the parliamentary debates (2 May 1996 and 27 August 1996) can be seen in Why no alimony for ex-husbands

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For a number of reasons, the Women's Charter needed to be amended, and in May 1996, the second reading of the Amendment Bill was tabled. (I am adhering to the English usage of the word 'tabled' which is to mean that it was presented for discussion, not the American usage, which is that it was shelved or postponed).

Soin proposed a further amendment. Noticing that "presently, only a husband owes a legal obligation to maintain a wife," she urged a further change to the law "to allow husbands to claim maintenance from their wives, in appropriate circumstances."

The minister indicated his disagreement. He said, "Call me old fashioned if you will; call me a male chauvinist if you must, but my upbringing and my background tell me that it is the duty of the husband to maintain his wife."

Nevertheless, since it was only the second reading, he conceded that it could be referred to the Select Committee for further consideration.

About 4 months later, the third reading was held, on 27 August 1996. Soin noted that her proposal had not been adopted. Once again, she gave numerous reasons why the law was defective without it.

This time, a PAP member of parliament, Kenneth Chen, spoke against her proposal. He said that "in Singapore, husbands are deemed to be the head of the family and are responsible for looking after the welfare for their wives and children."

A number of PAP backbenchers chorussed their agreement.

Then Abdullah Tarmugi, the Minister for Community Development, once again refused her suggestion, saying that when the Women's Charter was first passed in 1961, "maintenance for husbands was never in the Act and nobody made any squeak about it," implying that she should shut up now, and that "the general view is that.... it is the husband's duty to maintain his wife morally and legally."

"And I think this is shared by many men outside this House," he added for emphasis.

And so that's where the law stands today. Wives can sue their husbands for maintenance if they are financially neglected and in need, both while the marriage legally subsists (e.g. when emotionally estranged), and after divorce. Men cannot do the same even if they are ill or destitute and their wives or ex-wives more than able to support them.

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Soin used a number of compelling arguments:

1.1 The spirit of the Women's Charter, since its enactment in 1961 was for equality in marriage between a man and woman.

1.2. The social circumstances, though, had changed. While in 1961, only 1 in 5 women were working, in 1996, about 2 in 3 of them worked. Most wives now had an independent income.

1.3. About 1 in 3 marriages in 1996 involved women with better educational qualifications than their husbands. This suggested that a significant number of wives could be earning more than their husbands. What was inconceivable in 1961 -- that husbands could be more in need of support than their wives -- was a distinct reality today.

1.4. The Women's Charter already treated the woman as an economic unit and a source of financial support, as it provided for a court to order that a woman pay maintenance to support her children (fathers equally liable). Yet the law did not equalise the liability with respect to the spouse.

1.6  In making public policy, parliamentarians should leave aside  personal feelings and look at the facts. 

When she was still unsatisfied in the third reading, she added six more arguments:

1.7. Many women and women's groups stepped forward during the Select Committee hearings to support her proposal. Why were they ignored?

1.8. If a woman earned a good income but did not voluntarily want to support an ill husband, why should this burden then fall on society and the taxpayers while the woman got away scot-free?

1.9. She wanted Parliament to consider the effect on the children of these families when mothers were seen to be able to get away, while the children saw their fathers turning to public agencies for help.

1.10. If the government did not wish to go all the way to full equality, then at least write in some special conditions to allow a husband to claim maintenance in a limited way, as in Malaysia.

1.11. She anticipated that the minister might say that given our cultural setting, persuasion might work better than legislation to get wives to support their ill or incapacitated husbands. If that were so, she asked, why was there a need to legislate for husbands to support their wives? Why couldn't they likewise be persuaded?

1.12  She also noted that some of the male MPs had told her that they would never accept maintenance from a woman as this would hurt their male pride. "To them, I would like to say that for the truly needy husbands much more than their male pride will be hurt," was her gentle way of telling them, you elites don't speak for the marginalised.

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As you can see, it was a compelling set of arguments. In response, the following was all the PAP MPs and the minister had (and Yawning Bread cannot help but add his exclamations after each):

2.1  The minister said that a court can also order a woman to contribute towards the maintenance of a child.

YB: So? Kanwaljit Soin made the same point but saying that if the law saw the woman as a potential source of financial support for children, why couldn't the law see the woman likewise for husbands in need?

2.2  The minister said his upbringing and background told him that it was the duty of the husband to maintain his wife.

YB: The minister confused moral theory with social reality. People may feel all sorts of things as their duty, but whether they are able to discharge that duty in real life is a separate matter. That's what law is for: a mechanism to help resolve real-life situations in an equitable way. 

Soin rebutted this with point 1.6 above: Parliamentarians should leave aside personal biases and look at facts.

2.3  Kenneth Chen (PAP MP) said this blind spot in the law was not a question of gender equality. Marriage was a physical as well as a spiritual union between two persons. It was not a commercial contract.

YB: Meaningless waffle!

2.4  Chen said that entrusting the husband with the responsibility to look after the family was a social value. 

YB: More confusion of moral theory with social reality. Here it begins to suggest a general observation: that the PAP MPs see laws as instruments for enforcing a certain morality (theirs) rather than for enabling justice and equity for all. There is confusion whether their role is to create and refine secular mechanisms for effective action and redress or to compose moral scripture.

2.5  He further added that the present provision of the wife to claim maintenance from the husband should be maintained. "And I am sure that the majority of our women will have no problem with this concept."

YB: Irrelevant. The existing provision for the wife to claim maintenance was not in dispute.

2.6  In cases where the husband was terminally ill or handicapped and unable to work, "in our Asian society I doubt very much that many of our women will abandon their husbands", Chen said.

YB: More intellectual failure! Legal provisions are meant for situations when goodwill breaks down. Mentioning that goodwill can solve the problem in the case of the "many" is no excuse not to enact legal provisions to serve the few. And please spare us the "Asian society" crap.

2.7 In an unlikely situation where such cases did happen, Chen said he was "sure the immediate families [would] rally around them," failing which the government would help out.

YB: I guess, by "immediate families" he meant the husband's brothers and sisters. But this doesn't answer Soin's point about equity. As for the government helping out, Soin had already pointed out the taxpayer angle (point 1.8) and the effect on children (point 1.9).

None of Soin's arguments were rebutted by the PAP. In essence, all they offered were various rationalisations for the simple fact that their male egos didn't allow them to equalise the provisions in law. Their arguments were intellectually empty. Soin herself pointed out that "there is no rational distinction between a financially able husband and an equally financially able wife."

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Sexism is a strong current running through Singapore politics. Other issues indicating this bias have been that of medical benefits for female civil servants, quotas on female students in medical schools, citizenship by descent denied to children to Singaporean women married to foreigners, but offered to children of Singaporean men in similar situations, and resistance to offering residency rights to foreign husbands of Singaporean women, yet quickly offered to foreign wives of Singaporean men (think: Vietnamese brides for example). I believe there is a similar residency problem for husbands of foreign executives posted to Singapore.

Only now are some of these discrepancies being worked on after decades of complaints.

The best indicator of sexism in our politics may well be the fact that Singapore has never had a woman as a cabinet minister. Almost all Asian countries from Afghanistan to Japan have had female ministers; some, like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Philippines, have had two female heads of government already.

The PAP likes to boast that they choose MPs and ministers purely on merit, but even here, this argument has a flip side. 

Firstly, a lot has to do with how one defines merit, and depending on that, search results can be skewed. In fact, one suspects that the "halo effect" is very much in operation: that they are choosing people of similar outlook and biases.

For example, strong though Kanwaljit Soin's arguments were, no PAP MP stood up to echo them. Instead Tarmugi and Chen only revealed their subjective, elitist and male-chauvinist sides, while other members of the House twice voiced their approval with cries of "hear, hear!"

Secondly, it can thus be argued that political systems that require leaders to juggle their cabinet appointments to reflect competing representations rather than clinically on "merit" benefit from a lower risk of groupthink. There are benefits to bending over backwards to include women and minorities in any policy-making council.

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Most troubling of all, the PAP ministers and MPs didn't seem to be able to see the difference between legislating for fairness and equity and using laws to make pronouncements about morality. By this simple failure to do the most basic of jobs for a parliamentarian, you could say they are incompetent at their posts. So much for the "merit" claim.

I also found it remarkable that at no point in the debates did Soin or anyone else mention the constitution. Did Soin feel the constitution was no help at all?

There is some kind of equality clause in Article 12(1), which says,

12 (1) - All persons are equal before the law and entitled to the equal protection of the law.

But this is immediately muddled by 12(2) which says,

12 (2) - Except as expressly authorised by this Constitution, there shall be no discrimination against citizens of Singapore on the ground only of religion, race, descent or place of birth in any law or in the appointment to any office or employment under a public authority or in the administration of any law relating to the acquisition, holding or disposition of property or the establishing or carrying on of any trade, business, profession, vocation or employment.

I figure this means laws can discriminate by sex, but so long as both men and women are equally subject to this discriminatory law, 12(1) is satisfied. Thus, if we passed a law that said only men can hold driving licences but women cannot drive, I don't have confidence that this would be ruled unconstitutional.

After all, only women can sue their spouses for maintenance and men cannot. What's the difference, eh?

So folks, before we snigger at Saudi Arabia and how the grip of Wahhabism holds that country back, to the extent that women aren't even permitted to leave the home unescorted by a male relative, let alone drive a car, please consider setting our own house in order.

© Yawning Bread 

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