Thai women have come a long way. They have every right to be proud of their economic, political and social advancements as they and women around the world celebrate International Women's Day today. As a middle-income developing country, Thailand has made major strides in ensuring that women enjoy equal opportunities in access to education, healthcare and standard of living - the prerequisites for equality between the sexes.

Sustained efforts by the state and women's rights advocates are beginning to bear fruit. Many women who have taken advantage of the opportunities and entitlements available to all but the poorest and most marginalised have moved ahead and can take for granted that their rights as women, human beings and citizens will be respected. The progress made in the promotion of women's rights is irreversible. There is no better proof of this than the recent trend showing that more women than men are enrolling in university.

As more and more Thai women have broken through economic and social barriers, women's rights issues have become less clear. However, it would be a mistake to draw the conclusion that politics between the sexes, based on the oppression of women by a male-dominated establishment, is no longer a problem. There are still plenty of gender-equality problems that individual women, women's rights campaigners and Thai society as a whole have yet to overcome.

The most obvious of these is in the political sphere where women, who make up slightly more than 50 per cent of the country's total population, are disproportionately represented.

In the previous Parliament, women made up only about 10 per cent of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The proportion of females holding public office at local government levels is steadily rising as more women become politically aware and better at adjusting to political life and familiarising themselves with the affairs of their own communities.

Any move to correct this disparity in political power should, however, be gradual. The reason that there are many more men than women holding political office is that politics has long been the exclusive domain of man. As more and more women rise in the economic and social spheres, they will eventually get to take over many political offices now held by men. This would not be because of quotas set aside for women but because many women are more qualified or suitable than their male counterparts for some of these jobs.

Some militant feminists are missing the point when they try to campaign to put as many women as possible into political office as part of an affirmative action movement aimed at a higher representation of women in the shortest possible time. But sometimes their confrontational approach and anti-male rhetoric turns a lot of people off. An example of this was a questionnaire prepared by a female graduate student and distributed at a recent seminar on women studies which contained the question: "Do you believe Thai politics is so corrupt because there are too many men calling all the shots?"

Surely there is a better way to advocate women's rights without alienating the male population, who form the other half of the country's population, many of whom could be persuaded to join the noble cause of the empowerment of women.

Violence in the household where the great majority of victims are women and girls also requires greater public attention.

Thailand's overall performance in promoting women's rights is not bad compared to other developing countries, particularly in regard to the worst forms of exploitation. The sad irony is, however, that as Thailand has improved at preventing its women and girls from going into prostitution or being forced into bonded labour, human trafficking rings are smuggling women and girls from neighbouring countries for the exact same purposes. Thailand still has a long way to go before it can effectively suppress and eradicate human trafficking, a heinous crime, which has been branded a modern-day slave trade.

Entrenched corruption among law enforcement officials paid to turn a blind eye to human trafficking remains a major stumbling block, as is the apathetic attitude of the majority of Thai people who continue to remain ignorant of the fact that such crimes against humanity must not be tolerated regardless of the nationality of the victims.