Policy the way to improve things for women
By Zan Azlee

I would like to wish Malaysians a happy International Women’s Day. I would like to reflect on my reflections on women based on how I see things as a husband and a father of two girls.

When my eldest daughter Athena was in Standard Six several years ago, she was nominated for house captain. She was an athlete and represented the school in cricket, handball and athletics. She even won “Olahragawati Harapan”.

Another boy was nominated too and, according to her, instead of going through a voting process, the teacher made the boy the captain and her the vice-captain.

My wife and I were upset because what should have been done was for the teacher to call for a vote, and the person with the most support wins the position.

So, we complained to the school’s administration and the co-curriculum teacher admitted that something like that should not happen. They called for another meeting and organised a vote.

After everyone voted, the boy won and became captain while Athena became vice-captain. But the point was that it needed to go through a vote and we told her that she should never back down.

Deep-seated patriarchy

My wife Sheril and I work together running a small boutique media company. Usually, we have regular meetings and discussions with clients.

Sometimes, when I don’t attend and Sheril goes along with our small team, the clients would always only address the man in the team even if Sheril is the lead person in charge – and most of the time, the clients know this!

I would like to say that I know the feeling, but I don’t because it rarely happens to me. Regardless, I can understand the frustration.

Hence, we always try to inform the clients about it. It still happens though, and it just goes to show how patriarchal mentality is just so deep-set in our society that people don’t even realise it is wrong.

Women reps in cabinet

In 2018, when the Pakatan Harapan coalition won the election, one of the promises the leaders made was to have at least 30 percent women representation in the ministerial cabinet.

Look at the numbers now – only 16 percent of women ministers, which is only five out of 31 ministers. Even if we include the deputies, it only comes up to around 27 percent.

We need to acknowledge that gender inequality is still very prevalent. As much as we think we are making progress, this progress isn’t that significant.

We really need strong political will to make better progress when it comes to gender equality. The government needs to lead and policies need to be created to give this a much-needed push.

For starters, practise what they preach by increasing women’s representation in the government. We need quotas when it comes to women in leadership roles.

I’m sure that many men, and some women too, will be opposed to this and their reason will be “meritocracy”. Unfortunately, when something like sexism and toxic masculinity is so deeply set in society’s mentality, they won’t even realise that it is happening and only policy can overcome it.

There are many qualified – and overqualified – women to fill these quotas anyway so there should be no problem.

There should also be more laws to protect women against gender discrimination in government, the private workplace and the education system.

Women need all the help they can get. It’s not because they aren’t capable, but there are so many challenges stacked against them that it’s not a leveled or fair playing field.

[This article was originally written for and published at Malaysiakini.com]

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