Women's activism in Malaysia

Little African nations are widely known for their involvement in social activism. People in various countries on the continent try to protect human rights and raise the awareness of the society about lots of concerning matters that Africa faces today. There are many people in these countries whose rights are badly violated and that’s especially the case with women. The rights of African women are abused so much that it's unparalleled in any other place in the world. In spite of the fact that the continent is pretty diverse, in most regions female citizens are experiencing discrimination, sexual abuse, violence, economic issues, and political marginalization. This is why protecting human rights has become vital in Africa and fortunately, women’s activism rapidly raises.

Malaysia is one of the African nations which stands out with the number of socially active women. A decade ago women in this country had no reason to expect a change but now many women are actually working hard to transform women’s lives and take part in implementing certain kinds of reforms. They try to make society as tolerant as possible and promote the engagement of women in social activities. For this purpose more and more NGOs are established in the country that tries to call women to take steps forwards and raise voice in order to protect their rights. For example, UN Women which is a globally recognized organization, an entity of the United Nations that works for the empowerment of women, has its branch in Malaysia. They try their best to achieve gender equality and as a result, taking a look at the general image, Malaysian women can be a little bit more hopeful that something will change for good in the future.

The major problems of Malaysian women

Despite the fact that some progress has been made in protecting women’s rights in Malaysia, still, it’s a low-income African nation where poverty and unemployment are very high. Most of the women here don’t have a job at all and the ones who are fortunate enough, usually have to work in insecure, poorly paid jobs where they don’t have many opportunities for advancement. There are many women in Malaysia that work in illegal industries as it’s the only accessible choice for them to overcome poverty. The casino industry is one of them. If we check all casino review Malaysia articles, we immediately see that most of these websites feature women on their platforms, thus not only giving Malaysian women an unstable and dangerous job, but also a very gendered one. Therefore, gender inequality and job-related problems are mixed together in this industry for women and they have no other choice, but to risk their safety. They don’t talk about these issues out loud but clearly, they experience gender discrimination and poor work conditions in these places.

However, unemployment and poor labor conditions are not the only problems for Malaysian women. Also, they have fewer opportunities to get proper education and in the worst cases, they are left without any chance to go to school at all. Disparities between girls and boys start in primary school and continue throughout the whole educational system. The number of girls enrolled in the school is so low compared to boys and this has some certain reasons. First of all, according to the common stereotype in Malaysia, women don’t even need to get an education because there’s no place for them to use this education. As a big part of the society in this country believes, all women have to do is to take care of children or work in places that don’t have to do anything with education. However, as a result of the women who started to raise voice and protect their rights, in recent years the number of girls enrolled in primary schools has risen.

One more important issue is that women in Malaysia lack the possibility to be politically active. This has been a problem for many decades. It was considered that women didn’t have the power and intellectual abilities to lead the country and the main reason for this was the fact that they were deprived to get a proper education. Also, many women weren’t even given a chance to take care of the economic stability of their families as it’s against the traditional values of the country. Not surprisingly, everything comes from their traditions and it’s the main reason why male residents are believed to be more socially, politically, and economically active. And as a result, each Malaysian sector is accompanied by gender equality and discrimination against women.

But now the situation is probably going to change as Malaysian women started to fight for equality. Several social movements have been established for this purpose and as a consequence of their great effort, today democratic elections are increasing and more women take part in the contest for seats successfully. It doesn’t mean that politician women don’t experience electoral-related violence, but the overall situation is much better now.

Malaysian feminist activism

Plenty of research proves that today women’s activism in Malaysia rapidly raises. Many organizations in the country try to promote independent women in Parliament and help them be more socially active to protect their civil rights. These NGOs and especially UN women have been working effectively in the country. Increased rates of women activists may be the reason why things are going to finally change in this country.

First of all, if we take UN Women’s latest attempts into account, the situation in the workplace will highly likely change. With their help, Malaysia now plans to bring more women into the workforce and support single mothers which are quite a lot in the country. UN women continue to work hard about overcoming these issues and in fact, they plan to increase female labor participation from 54% to 59% by 2021. Also, Malaysia has created a national action plan to empower socially and economically disadvantaged single mothers and female-headed households which are mainly based in rural areas. And this is only achievable if women will be equal partners to men.

Some progress on Malaysian women’s rights has already been achieved. Specifically, if years ago women had zero chance to become economically independent, now there are so many women entrepreneurs in the country and their success stories are inspirational for many people across the world. Also, the number of women who work in the public sector has increased as well, but still, more work needs to be done in order to achieve gender equality. Currently, according to the UN women data gender equality is promoted by almost 67% of legal frameworks and mainly they focus on violence against women. Also, only 14.4% of parliament seats are held by women at this moment, but those who are concerned about the rights of Malaysian women can be optimistic. Female activism in Malaysia is a more powerful force today than it has ever been and these people work hard on empowering women and overcoming existing social, economic, and political issues.