Procesos de patrimonialización a partir de procesos cognitivos.

Fah’s story provides an introduction to some of the important themes that recur within the narratives of all the women who participated in this research, including: independence and personal autonomy, learning about culture and the politics of ‘cultural integrity’, and the impact of class on women’s work and education opportunities. She also raises several issues that were more particular (although not exclusive) to the women in this chapter.

The issue of honour as a motivation for applying for the scholarship was more prominent within this group, primarily due to the form that the scholarship was offered in at the time. While in more recent times NZAID scholarships have been targeted at government employees who can tie postgraduate research projects to specific development objectives within their organisations, in this earlier period the scholarship offered broad degree programmes to young, high achieving students at several of Thailand’s most prestigious universities. It is perhaps not surprising then that ‘development’ or ‘the good of the nation’ was not the primary focus of these young high- achieving students concerned with negotiating familial expectations of success. Indeed one of the other women noted that she had only gone along with the scholarship idea at the behest of her mother:

At the that time, I had actually got into the university that I wanted to go to, in the faculty that I wanted to study in.

I was studying at one of the top five universities in Thailand, so I was quite happy.

But, then it just happened that a person who is known to my family came to my family, and said, ‘oh, I saw this scholarship. It looks interesting. It’s a scholarship to go to New Zealand.’

At first, I wasn’t really interested in it,

but it was my mother who wanted me to try for it. And in the end, I thought well, why not? (Th 2)

The third participant noted that, like Fah, she had tagged along to the scholarship exam with a friend:

There was no particular reason why I applied for that particular scholarship. It just happened that one of my friends saw an advertisement, and she said ‘hey, why don’t we go and take this exam’.

We were taking an exam for another scholarship already, and this exam was quite close, so we said, ‘okay’.

I think there was no particular reason why we applied, except that we passed our high school with quite good grades.

You know, not excellent, but passable enough to take many scholarship exams. So I thought, ‘oh, why not?’,

because we were preparing for the King’s scholarship already. So we took this one too.

And, there was no particular reason why we wanted to go overseas, except just to give it a try.

And New Zealand sounded like quite an exotic place for Thai students to be, so we thought, okay, lets give it a shot. (Th3)

With only several weeks to prepare themselves, and very little knowledge of what they were in for – As Fah noted ‘twenty something years ago, Thai people didn’t know much about Australia and New Zealand’ – the women packed to leave:

We were not informed of the results until about a month or so before we had to go to New Zealand.

So we were like, ‘Oh, okay, we have a scholarship, but what do we have to do.’ ‘We have to leave in two weeks time!’

So it was quite hectic. (Th3)

Unsurprisingly, with two weeks to prepare, all the women reported feeling totally out of their depth in their first year in New Zealand.

The first year was a very difficult experience for me.

First, studying English in Thailand is not the same as living amongst English speaking people.

My English was only good enough to read and comprehend.

I couldn’t write properly, because we didn’t focus on that kind of training in Thailand,

at least in high school. I couldn’t speak,

I didn’t understand what the Kiwis were saying, so, I had a lot of things to deal with.

And I failed.

I failed two courses in my first year.

And they were very important courses that everybody needs to pass before they can go on to the next stage.

Even though we had two weeks to prepare ourselves, the first time that we attended a class, we couldn’t actually put down a single word of what the lecturer said.

It was just totally a mess for me.

When you go to class, and then, when the class has finished, you have got nothing out of it, you start panicking.

I graduated from a school that is considered a top ten school, which has the best English course in Thailand,

and it turned out that I didn’t have any problems getting through an entrance exam in Thailand, with a very high score in English,

but in New Zealand, it was just, it was totally a mess. (Th2)

On top of the difficulties these women had adjusting to their new academic environment and the level of English that was required of them, these two participants said they also felt a strong sense of culture shock (Fah noted that frequently trips home made this less of an issue for her). They argued that this feeling was particularly acute for them because, as Thai women, they had been ‘protected’ from previous opportunities to learn much about the world:

It was quite an experience.

The first six months were very tough. We needed to adjust ourselves a lot.

It was my first time I’d actually been away from home, and an eighteen year old girl from Thailand is different from an eighteen year old girl in New Zealand, because, for Thai people, we don’t actually go out for long.

And being protected by the family, you don’t know much about the outside world.

We only go to school, and come back home. That’s it.

So, it was quite a big change for me. (Th2)

All the women were required to call upon huge reserves of courage to get them through this period. Considerable support from NZAID in the form of pastoral care and extra tutoring, and the kindness of several key lecturers helped them get their work under control, and a new sense of competence began to emerge. As one of the women noted, this additional support, on top of the fact that she was receiving a scholarship, made the pressure to succeed incredibly intense during this period. When I asked her about making new friends she replied:

I think that my mentality was, ‘I have to overcome this studying thing.’ That was the main priority.

do,

but, I felt very guilty, because I had a scholarship, and I was supposed to do well.

My foreigner friends were all trying to help me,

and all my tutors were waiting to see whether I did well. ‘Did she pass?

‘What mark did you get?’

So, there was a lot of pressure to perform well, rather than trying to make more friends. (Th3)

This pressure to succeed, and the huge amount of stress associated with failing two courses eventually translated into an immense sense of pride in her ability to take on and survive such a difficult task:

It was very challenging.

Initially it reduced my self-confidence, and then gradually it built it up.

I think my four years time in New Zealand was a very defining moment for me in terms of my character.

Before I went to New Zealand, I was in a good school, I was a good student,

and I always got straight As.

When I entered university, I got quite a high mark, so I never expected things to be so difficult when I went overseas.

because I thought, ‘okay, ‘I can deal with it. I am a hardworking person’. It was a very humbling experience, I think.

You know, just because you are good in Thailand, that doesn’t mean that you will automatically be good somewhere else.

It was very difficult for me,

but I passed everything in my second year.

I had to be there for four years, because of repeating some courses, but I think by the end of the fourth year my English was quite good, and I could write. In my last class, I got the highest mark, and I was very, very proud.

I chose to do my course because one person told me that if you are not a native speaker of English, you will never pass this degree.

I said ‘I can. It’s not so difficult. I can, but I will have to work harder’. And I did.

So after four years there, I think I learnt a lot of things. It was good.

It was very tough, and it was character building. and I liked that. (Th3)

While it was initially difficult to find time for friendships, as their courses progressed, and they felt more confident about their academic abilities, new relationships started to assume a position of greater importance:

It was a mess when we started.

But we got used to things, and we became much happier. And, the best part was that I was able to make lots of friends.

In my second year, I helped to organise an orientation for all the Asian students who came to study in New Zealand.

It was a great time for me, because, in my first year, I remembered how I had felt.

So I tried to help them as much as I could, because I didn’t want them to feel as bad as I did.

And it was a good way to get to know other people, other Asian students. (Th2)

Friendships with other international students (as well as the odd Kiwi) were considered to be an important source of new cultural knowledge and understanding. Romantic relationships also played a significant role in pushing the women to broaden their understanding of other cultures, as well as their own:

I had a boyfriend who was a Pacific Islander. It wasn’t very serious,

but I learnt things, culturally.

What I found was that Pacific culture was very, very Asian, in my opinion. They had certain roles for women.

They had ideas about what women can or cannot do. I don’t think it was like that in Western culture. At least, that was my impression at that time.

I mean, in their culture women are well respected, but they have a certain role to play in that society, and it was expected that women would have to do this, and do that.

Whether its the same as in Thailand, I would say yes.

Even now, you know, Thai women are still expected to take care of babies to a certain extent, but of course, now they are also expected to work.

So, I don’t know, but, I think in terms of culture, I found that, surprisingly, the Islanders are very, very Asian.

Women have to do what they are expected to do.

Sometimes it’s repressive.

I couldn’t say my opinion in front of my boyfriend’s family. I had to hide things.

But, you know, it wasn’t a big issue, but I think it was kind of interesting for me. (Th3)

This participant relayed that her time in New Zealand and a later study opportunity in Japan were both important chances to think and learn more about gender roles. While she positioned New Zealand as somewhat more progressive than Thailand in terms of the opportunities available to women, her time in Japan gave her a sense of the progress that Thai women have made:

Japan is very typically Asian.

I believe, even now, the highest aspiration of Japanese women is to get married and settle down, and spend your husband’s money.

So I often got questions like ‘why aren’t you married?’ ‘Why do you want to study in university?’

‘Why do you work for the government?’ I said, ‘I don’t know’.

I mean, at that time, I was in my mid twenties and in Thailand, you are just starting to work.

You’re not expected to get married.

So, you get frowned upon by traditional Japanese people, because, like I said, at a certain point in life, women, we have to get married.

You also see that in the media, in Japan, on TV, the women are trying to look like dolls.

They have no strong role for women.

There were women in history, if you see Japanese historical soaps, you see strong women characters,

but they are mothers of the future children, and their purpose is to raise this boy to become a shogun, and that kind of role.

Not for herself.

So, women are expected to be doing something for the men in the family. And, so, I often got these sorts of questions.

I enjoyed it very much, but by my second year, I felt like, ‘I can’t stand this culture, anymore’.

In New Zealand, I felt that you are a person, regardless of whether you are a man or a woman. (Th3)

The other participant also emphasised the value of learning about what she saw to be more liberal gender roles in New Zealand. She felt that the study experience had encouraged her to become more independent:

In New Zealand, all women help themselves. They don’t wait for men to help them.

I don’t know, maybe because of personal experience, as far as I could see, there’s no difference between men and women in New Zealand.

What men can do, women also can do.

Like, in New Zealand, you have soccer, women’s soccer, women’s rugby, you do everything the same.

There we are equal, so it tends to make you a more independent woman. You are able to do lots of things on your own without having to wait for help. Being independent is good in a sense that you know that you are not waiting for someone to help you all the time, and it makes you proud of yourself. (Th2)

As well as feeling like the experience had given them more pride in themselves and made them feel more independent, they also believed that the hardship and hard work involved had made them more disciplined and determined:

My experience was, don’t be complacent about your ability. You have to work hard.

If you really put effort into doing something, you can overcome it. Maybe you can’t be so excellent at everything,

but at least you can achieve what you set out to do. (Th3)

The thing that I think that we received from this scholarship after we finished is that you didn’t have much loitering time,

because most of the time we were either studying or we were doing activities. So, it made us feel that if you are sitting there doing nothing, you are a useless person.

I mean, there’s not even a single day that passed by without contributing something, doing something.

After I got back, it became my habit that I’m not wasting my time doing nothing.

If you are just sitting there doing nothing, then what a waste of time. (Th2) All felt that this new sense of discipline had helped them ‘grow up’:

It’s like being a teenager is a turning point,

because when I came back and I compared myself with other people who didn’t do a Bachelors degree abroad, their perceptions towards the world were different.

Even though they graduated from a university in Thailand, they didn’t actually grow up.

They were still reading comics,

they were still playing computer games, and wasting time. (Th2)

All three also reported that these new personal resources have been useful in their working lives. As Fah noted, earlier, greater cultural awareness is seen as particularly useful when attempting to establish and maintain good multi-lateral working relationships. Another participant also commented on this:

I think it broadened my view of the world.

Because, if you’re not exposed to different cultures, you tend to have a narrow perception of the world.

When you get to know more people, you can be a more understanding person when things happen with certain people from different nations, and you think, okay, maybe their background is different.

Countries perceive things differently, so you can try and be a reasonable person, not just jump to conclusions right away.

If you know what their background is, then you know why they act the way they do,

whether it is justified or not justified, whether it is acceptable in their culture.

Because sometimes they don’t mean to offend you in a certain way, but, if you know the reason behind it, then this will not create a misunderstanding between people. (Th2)

This participant noted that as well as making her a more flexible and a more competent negotiator, the cultural knowledge she had gained from her friendships with other international students in New Zealand had been a crucial asset when she was given a role as an advisor to other ASEAN27 _{countries. This new knowledge was the source of new}

solidarities, and a greater commitment to the benefits of cross-cultural dialogue: When I worked with negotiators from the ASEAN countries, they didn’t actually get close enough to you to tell you lots of things, but because I already knew from my friends [that I met in New Zealand] what the reasons were behind their actions, I already understood why they proposed to do things this way and not that way.

So it actually helps a lot.

The ASEAN countries have different levels of development, and sometimes we have personal conflicts because of this situation.

But what I am glad about is that I am able to give them some recommendations about their projects and what they want to do for their country,

In document Educación patrimonial y diversidad: Evaluación de programas y definición de un modelo basado en los procesos de Patrimonialización (página 159-162)