Hsing Miao Chi
Before I came to the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of York, I completed my MA programme in Applied Science of Living in Taiwan (the main focus of this degree was the family).With nearly two years experiences of research assistant in Taiwan, explored the issues like grandparenting and health educational program of anti-smoking for pregnant and postpartum mothers. It is a great opportunity for me to study here to explore the relationship
between woman and family.
My thesis is about the life experience and practice of the role of mother-in-law and their negotiations in the context of cross-border marriage in Taiwan. To my knowledge, seeing the older woman as an "oppressive other" is a popular (mis)conception of the role she plays in the cross-border marriage between Taiwanese men and Southeast Asian women. The current researchers often employ these descriptions provided by mothers-in-law to explain the foreign bride's oppressed position in the household, rather than dwell on the interaction between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. They make no attempt to explain these interactions in term of wider social processes. I am not intending to overlook the current research contribution on the marriage immigrate women and the fact that they struggle for integrating themselves into the whole community. Rather I consider my work as another way to read the women's agency and negotiation constraint by gender roles. That is to say, under the multiple functions of patriarchal and cultural cycle, plus the general suspicion on immigrated women accentuated by the society and communities, mothers-in-law, another significant group of older women, are also involved in this identification and construction process.