Social Relationships in the Modem Age: Never-married Women in Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila

This exploratory paper uses Giddens’s paradigm of social change to examine the social relationships of never-married professional women in Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila. Based on in-depth interviews, two related questions are addressed: First, how do never-married women view their place in their family network? Second, what sources of social support are available to these women? The findings show that while social relationships are being reshaped by the powerful impact of modernity, the outcome of Giddens’s modernity is not uniform in these three social settings. Local context plays an important role in shaping the outcome.