Mention communists, guerillas, freedom fighters, militants and ideologues and the images that leap to mind
are invariably male. In Asia, it is no different, except there is an added bias of patriarchy and of a history that
has, until recently, been constructed and then recounted by former colonial powers and their historians. After
independence, new ‘autonomous’ national histories had to be created and national curricula constructed,
with those not fitting into these narratives either omitted or marginalised. Adrianna Tan examines the case of
the women warriors of the Malayan Communist Party.
