Singapore's teenaged girls warranting attention

Agence France Presse. November 28, 1999

Related: Gang of Five: How serious is the problem of girl violence? ASIAWEEK

FOR stealing someone else's boyfriend, a teenage Singaporean girl is beaten and kicked until she bleeds from the nose and lies whimpering, curled up in pain.

The girls who ganged up on her are sentenced to jail and, as the reel rolls on, we follow one of the members of the group, teenage Mei Ling, as she trudges through three years in prison.

We view Mei Ling's growing appreciation for things she took for granted, such as her mother, home-cooked food and a relatively easy life.

The video, Girls don't go to prison, was distributed to Singaporean schools in October to help deter teenage girls like Mei Ling from committing offences they would regret later.

A rising trend of tattooed, cross-dressing teenaged girls involved in offences ranging from mischief to serious crimes in Singapore has authorities worried in a society used to viewing girls as demure and obedient.

Though most are involved in petty offences, this trend "could be symptomatic of more serious problems such as involvement in gangs or a loss of parental control," the Education Ministry said in a recent report.

Teenage girls now make up two thirds of the cases involving children deemed beyond parental control, according to figures from the Ministry of Community Development.

The proportion of girls said to be out of control rose to 70 percent in the first six months of 1999 from 59 percent of cases in 1995.

A system introduced in schools since 1995 to track misbehaviour among female students has seen the rate for minor offences such as rudeness and bullying, truancy and other attendance-related matters jump 32 percent in 1998, compared to a nine percent rise in 1997.

The rate of major offences including theft, assault, fighting, gangsterism and substance abuse among girls swelled to 23 percent in 1998.

The large increases in female students' offences seen in 1998 could be partly due to an improved reporting system, the Education Ministry said.

But sociologists and social workers said these juvenile problems could be traced to several other sources.

Cultural changes meant traditional norms and values in society were not as clear cut as before.

"Girls have a greater degree of freedom now ... especially with the greater emphasis on independence," sociologist Alfred Siu-Kay Choi said.

Girls believed they could do as boys could, he said. For example, more girls were smoking, said Choi, who is also a member of the Inter-Ministry Committee on Youth Crime.  There was also more tolerance in society for "gender-diffusion", he said, referring to cross-dressing among girls.

 With more families seeing both parents working, children were spending less time at home and more time with friends.

 "So there are more opportunities to be out there, mixing around, and the probability of mixing with the wrong crowd is increased," said Ngiam Tee Liang, associate professor of the department of social work and psychology at the National University of Singapore.

Police statistics showed that though fewer female juveniles were arrested during the first six months of this year as compared to the same period last year, the proportion of girls out of all juvenile arrest cases rose slightly to 32 percent this year from 30 percent in 1998.

The police are part of an Inter-Ministry Committee on Youth Crime which is also made up of representatives from the ministries of Community Development, Home Affairs and Education, and the juvenile court.