https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gwao.12805

This article explores the experiences of 10 educated middle-class Singaporean women who act in contrast to the state's neoliberal focus on continuous employment, opting-out of full-time professional work to intensively parent their children. Using the theoretical lens of intensive motherhood and a qualitative longitudinal approach, we explore how these women legitimize their position, highlighting a culturally specific performance of motherhood (“Professional Motherhood”). Professional motherhood enrolls elements of former professional identities and skillsets into everyday motherhood, performed through three strategies: positioning, productive, and practicing motherhood. We contribute to existing literature by demonstrating that culturally informed variations of motherhood exist beyond the (largely Western) dominant lens of intensive motherhood ideology. Professional motherhood is experienced as a radical step by women, proving partially successful in legitimizing opt-out decisions. However, by incorporating and further emphasizing deeply ingrained ideal worker expectations, women risk further upholding the state's competing logics and their obligations as mothers/workers. © 2022 The Authors. Gender, Work & Organization published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

With the dust settled after Singapore’s 2015 parliamentary elections, the only aspect pundits and Singaporean politics watchers could agree on was that the People’s Action Party’s comeback from its performance at the 2011 elections, although not of Lazarus proportions, was most certainly unexpected. While the result of the 2015 elections has gone through several post-election analytical mills, what has been oddly absent in such analyses is a discussion of gender in Singaporean politics. This article considers the relationship between gender and Singaporean politics through the experience of the 2015 election and its results. It shows that while Singapore has moved some way towards assuaging the demands of liberal feminists for greater representation in the political sphere, much more has to be done in order for gender equality to be achieved. The article argues for the Group Representation Constituency method of electing parliamentarians to be adapted to ensure a greater number of female parliamentarians while a quota system may be required for cabinet to be truly representative of the female demographic of Singapore.