Conditions for women to be selected as an assistant to the village headman in Rongkham district, Kalasin province

Abstract

The objectives of this research was to study the conditions of promoting the position of the female assistant village headman and to investigate the impacts of gender factor on the capacity of negotiation and adjustment to the life circumstances and obstacles in Rong Kham district, Kalasin province. This research was a qualitative research with the in-depth interview to collect data of the informants including four female assistant village headman in Rong Kham subdistrict, four of their co-workers, and three male assistant village headman. Data was analyzed regarding the application of the concept of Marzano and the implementation of the statistical software.The results showed that female candidate was promoted as the assistant village headman under two important conditions. Firstly, the selector or village headman considered the conditions of leadership, work experiences of public, familiarity, reputation in the village, and family supports. Secondly, the selected one or the female candidate had the closed relationship the village headman, demanded to get accepted in the village and to enhance the community conditions. The female assistant village headman still had some work limitations. Therefore, she should be able to adjust and negotiate by creating personal expressions, social spaces, and sexual identity for both family and administrative works.

Keywords: Feminism; Everyday Politics; Gender