Female PM can't protect women

While I agree with most of your editorial about the need to do more to protect women in Thailand from violence, I was surprised you said nothing about the Dutch woman who was raped in Krabi. The tourism minister said it wasn’t rape because the woman had dinner with the accused man. In other words, according to that line of thinking, if a woman has dinner with a man, he has every right to beat her up and rape her. The fact that Prime Minister Yingluck didn’t respond to the tourism minister’s comment shows how naive it is to believe that, just because Thailand has a female prime minister, things are going to get better for Thai women. Even India once elected a female premier. 

It’s one thing to elect a rich, elitist woman to office. It’s a totally different matter to protect the rights and safety of average women, who are neither rich nor elitist. Nothing has changed.

Eric Bahrt

Pattaya