New Journeys through Old Paths: Critical Readings on Gender in East Timor

This article discusses some political and theoretical texts on gender condition in Southeast Asia in general, and in East Timor in particular, trying to examine values related to traditional female roles, as well as the strategies used to recognize women in political and social fields, that are conventionally characterized by male dominance. In the post-colonial space of East Timor, the intersections of past and present, of the global and the local, of war and peace, define the guidelines to explore the negotiation and evolution of gender concepts. Listening actively to the narratives of women from Southeast Asian transitional territories, like East Timor, requires translation, equivalence, dialogue and negotiation resources, in order to find points of convergence and divergence with dominant knowledge, and thus build and implement concrete and specific strategies, while exercising the hermeneutics of suspicion on the alleged universality of Western thought.