The Women in Asia Conference is affiliated with the Women’s Forum of the Asian Studies Association of Australia. WIAC2019 is the 12th Women in Asia Conference. It is being held at UNSW and supported by UNSW’s Institute for Global Development.

There is a significant populist trend in which ‘elites’ are increasingly seen as being ‘out of touch’ with ‘ordinary people’. This is manifest across the globe but includes Asia. WIAC2019 considers the role and position of women in Asia in an era of anti-elitism. A range of pressing social, economic and legal challenges face the nation-state and regional stability due to rising populism in Asia.

WIAC 2019 seeks to:

• generate new knowledge about the impact of changing gender norms in the context of growing support for anti-elite, conservative and fundamentalist movements.
• adopt an interdisciplinary, comparative and gendered approach.
• consider how changing gender norms intersect with populism’s appeal in Asia.
• explore the ways that perceived threats to traditional norms of men and women’s roles and diverse expressions of gender and sexuality are fundamental to the rise in Asian populism.