Rights in Transition: Women's Rights Between Tradition and Western Influence in Nineteenth and Early‐Twentieth‐Century Siam

ABSTRACT This study explores the evolution of women's rights in Siam during the nineteenth and early‐twentieth century. The article utilises two main types of primary sources, official documents and women's magazines, to uncover how Siamese elites selectively adapted western concepts of rights to maintain traditional power structures. It is argued that the reaffirmation and transformation of women's rights in the legal code was a hybridisation of traditional Siamese customs and Enlightenment ideas. Additionally, an analysis of women's magazines demonstrates how elite men utilised these publications to manufacture a concept of women's rights that would suit their interests.