Speech by Marina Mahathir at YWCA 27th Biennial Delegates Conference, June 11-12 2010

Rev Dr Thomas Philips – President, Council of Churches Malaysia
Mrs Josephine Chua – President, YWCA Malaysia
Mrs Sheila Ramayah – President of YWCA Petaling Jaya
Mrs Kemmy Chuah – Organising Chairperson & Immediate Past President of YWCA Petaling Jaya
YB Hannah Yeoh – State Assemblyperson for Subang Jaya
YBhg Dato’ Ramani Gurusamy – Deputy President, National Council of Women’s Organisations

Ladies and gentlemen,good morning.

First of all, let me thank the YWCA for so kindly inviting me here to speak at your 27th Biennial Delegates Conference. The YWCA has a long history of working for and with young women, a group that I am particularly interested in and have always sought to motivate. Certainly the YWCA is a leader in this field and many other organizations can emulate what you have done for young women everywhere, so I am honoured at this opportunity to speak to you.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have been asked to speak on the opportunities and challenges for women in building a diverse and united Malaysia. I liked this topic very much because it assumes two things; one that women do have a role in building a diverse and united Malaysia and secondly that diversity and unity is a good thing.

Having said that, in Malaysia, these are not assumptions that are universally accepted at all. Not too long ago, the head of CUEPACS, the civil service union, complained that there were too many women in the civil service holding high positions and that this would hamper our economic progress. He gave no facts to back up his theory that we would hold back our development, which makes me wonder where his prejudices truly come from. In fact the 2010 UNDP Asia Pacific Human Development Report recommended the very opposite; that if we can get at least 70% of our women in paid work, then we could actually raise our GDP by 3%.

The assumption that diversity and unity among that diversity are good things is also not a universal assumption in this country. We have seen the strident calls by certain parties to promote the rights of one group over another. This by itself does not ignore diversity but wants there to be inequality within that diversity. Inequality, as we have seen everywhere, does very little to promote unity.

So let me begin first with the issue of diversity and inequality. When we talk about diversity, we have to acknowledge that within any one society there are many ways to look at diversity. A diverse society comprises not just men and women, but also different classes, races, religions, cultures, languages, lifestyles, sexual orientations and much more. By this definition, there is no such thing as a homogenous society, even when on the surface it may seem so. Countries like Japan and Korea particularly come to mind. As homogenous as these societies may seem, in fact beyond the superficial images that we see there is still diversity amongst its populace, not least in terms of lifestyle and class.

Diversity is also overlapping. There are rich and poor men and women of different races, religions and lifestyles for example. Thus it is often wrong to simplify anyone as simply belonging to one group because everyone is multifaceted and multi-identified. Ignoring any of these identities often leads to neglect at the very least and discrimination at the worst. A rich man may seem to have everything, but if he is also homosexual, that would also make him a member of one of the most discriminated communities we have in the country.

Malaysia has long been identified as a country made up of diversities. The diversity most often mentioned is only race and religion. Perhaps this is because these two categories are believed to be the ones most likely to cause conflict. Indeed when we look at places like Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda or Palestine, these seem to confirm that belief. Yet at the same time, if we take a long view of history, we also often find that these different groups are capable of living together in reasonable harmony for long periods until something changes in their society and conflict arises.

In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse, he makes the case that the cause of conflict in many societies is not the fact of the existence of different groups per se but inequalities between them that arise from other factors, usually related to economic resources. Thus, although the Rwandan genocide was seen as a war between Hutus and Tutsis, the source of the conflict may be traced back to over-population and government policies that reduced the size of farms to uneconomical levels, thus causing hunger. And we know that nothing makes a person angrier than hunger.

Even in the case of Palestine, that seemingly most intractable of conflicts, people of different faiths lived in harmony there for many centuries until, without consulting them, the colonial powers carved out the new state of Israel to house thousands of foreigners who had very little in common with the natives. This is the same recipe that causes conflict elsewhere, for example in West Papua, a province colonized by Indonesia which sent thousands of non-Papuans to live there under its Transmigrasi programme. Imagine if we did the same to Sabah and Sarawak.

The point I am trying to make is that diversity by itself is no obstacle to unity. And again Malaysia makes the case for that. From the very beginning leading up to the independence of Malaya from the British, our diversity was accepted as a given and the project that became Malaysia was a source of unity for all. What has led to conflict has always been inequality of every kind, not diversity in itself.

Let me divert for a moment and talk about gender diversity. This is of course different from sex diversity, of which there is no argument; we have men and we have women and they are biologically different. Gender however refers to the roles that society constructs for men and women and these can change over time and across cultures. For instance, at one time women were thought incapable of driving or taking any part in the governance of their country. Today we have women fighter pilots and astronauts, prime ministers and presidents. Gender therefore is human-made and can be challenged and changed.

It is true also, as seen by the examples I have given, that gender stereotypes for women have changed much faster than for men. While many societies now accept women in the workplace, they still have problems accepting men working in the home. The term ‘househusbands’ is still said with an amused tone while ‘housewives’ even warrant a glamorous TV show. The non-acceptance of certain gender roles is also an obstacle to unity because they often stem from inequalities.

For instance, ‘housewife’ is a term that is viewed with great ambivalence. On the one hand, the view that a woman’s role is primarily in the home gives the housewife an almost martyred status because she is fulfilling the role of the ‘good mother’ always at home with her children. On the other hand, sometimes the term can also imply an uneducated woman, somehow not contributing to the development of society because she is not out there working. Or, if she is educated but chose to stay home, she is viewed as selfish or spoilt. The fact that she is always working at home and that it is her work that allows her husband to go out to the workplace for his job is often ignored.

On the other hand, women who go out and work are approved of because they are seen to be somehow smarter. At the same time however they are also viewed as somewhat deficient mothers because they are not at home nurturing their children all the time. Men are not subject to the same critical eye; successful male corporate leaders are rarely assessed for their fathering skills. In reality, most women these days juggle two jobs, both in the office and at home and are judged as either ‘superwomen’ and therefore a bit of an anomaly, or not very good at either. Either way, she loses in society’s view of her.

This diversity is thus characterized by inequality and leads to much conflict, both within women as they struggle with the difficulties of trying to do both jobs well, and between men and women as women grow to resent men’s lack of contribution to childcare, for instance.

This unequal view of women has many consequences. As is generally known, today there are many more female students, some 62%, in universities than there are men. But the same cannot be said in the workplace where they go to after graduating. With the exception of the civil service, by and large there are still more men than women in the private sector particularly at management levels and even less at Board levels. Why is this? This is because even though there are more female undergraduates in university, they are unevenly distributed among fields of study. Girls tend to study more ‘feminine’ subjects in the arts or social sciences, rather than in the hard sciences or IT, thus finding it more difficult to find jobs afterwards commensurate with their qualifications. We are thus left with many qualified women with no jobs, a source of frustration for them. Here again, it may be gender stereotypes that herd female students into certain fields and not others. Thus while the 10th Malaysia Plan aims to increase women’s participation in the labour force from the current 46% to 55% in 2015, one needs to look at whether women’s educational choices fulfill that need, or do we expect women to only fill the lower end jobs.

Of the women who do find jobs, the impact of gender stereotyping is felt a few years down the line. Many companies complain that after grooming and training young women for several years, they often lose them when they are in their ‘30s because they stop work after getting married and having children. The burden of having to do both jobs often proves too much for many women, especially when domestic help can be difficult to come by. This does not happen with men; thus we find that the higher up the echelons of the corporate world the less diverse it becomes.

This has some other consequences. Aside from the absence of fathers from the nurturing of children as they grow up, having only men in the workplace leads to decisions that are typically more male-centric and not necessarily the most profitable either. Carlos Ghosn, the head of Renault and Nissan, likes to tell the story of how he noticed that in Japan, most decisions to buy cars are actually made by women. Yet men make all the company’s marketing decisions and therefore all the advertising and retailing of Nissan cars in Japan are aimed at men.

Ghosn then did a simple thing; he staffed his car showrooms with female salespersons. The result was that the sales of Nissan cars rose dramatically upwards, helping to turn around a company that was in major financial trouble.

Similarly when my co-executive producer Lina Tan and I first started looking for sponsors for our TV programme 3R-Respect, Relax, Respond, we avoided the soap and shampoo companies that were the ‘traditional’ women’s products. Instead we went to companies that produced mobile phones, cars and computers and to banks and pointed out to them that young women made up a substantial portion of their customer base. Therefore it made sense to sponsor a TV programme for young women. It is amazing how many of them had not noticed this fact, and that is really because of lack of diversity at the decisionmaking levels in those companies.

When people in a homogenous workplace think that they reflect the market, they will tend to assume that everyone else thinks like them and likes what they like. It is very hard to understand diversity in society if the workplace is itself not diverse. And this non-comprehension of diversity is what leads to conflict, both in the workplace and in society as a whole. You cannot treat someone equally if you don’t even really acknowledge that they are there.

Which returns me to the question of diversity in society as a whole. The conflicts that arise in a society, as I have mentioned before, comes from inequalities within that society. Our sources of conflict among the many ethnic groups in Malaysia do come from social, economic and political inequalities, not purely by the fact that there are cultural and religious differences among us.

Yet we have made great progress since 1957 to become the developed country that we are today. In Malaysia we enjoy many facilities that would be regarded as luxuries in many other parts of the world; hospitals, highways, universities. This cannot be under-estimated if we travel to many countries in the developing world; the relative comfort that most of us live in is something we should appreciate.

However of late we have seen conflicts arising among us. Some of us are puzzled and recall with nostalgia the good old days when we lived together peacefully. There is no one thing that leads to conflicts but often a combination of many factors which if unresolved builds pressure that eventually leads to conflict.

I don’t intend to go into everything that leads to conflict situations in our society. But I am just going to say that the refusal to understand what diversity means in our society is one major problem. For example, as much as our country has progressed economically, it is largely uneven. Gaps exist not only between communities but also within communities.

For instance, while Malaysia has managed to reduce poverty from 17% of its population in 1989 to 4% in 2007, this is not evenly spread once we disaggregate the data. In rural Sabah for example, 36% of its people lived in poverty in 1989 and although this has been reduced to 26% in 2007, this is not only far above the national rate but the gap has widened from about two times the rate in 1989 to about six times.

The economic gaps between the different communities have been largely reduced but among non-Malay Bumiputras, poverty levels are still in double digits. And although child poverty has been reduced from 29% to 9% in the last twenty years, half of those poor children are located in Sabah.

Indeed according to the UN, overall economic inequality in Malaysia has remained unchanged in the last 40 years. We have made significant progress in inter-ethnic inequality, from 14% difference between Malays and non-Malays to only 2% today, and 6% between Bumiputras and non-Bumiputras. The much bigger issue today is intra-ethnic inequality. Does this come from not recognizing that there is diversity within that large category known as ‘Bumiputra’?

We can see that problems of poverty can be reduced by good government policy. But this involves having the sort of policymakers that recognize that because we have a diverse population, economic policies, as well as all other policies, affect people differently. Not addressing this diversity is what threatens unity. Therefore the solution, to my min, is to ensure that policymakers are equally diverse.

Let me go back once again to the issue of gender diversity and the conflicts that arise from the lack of recognition of that fact. There are three main sources of policy in this country broadly speaking; Parliament, state legislatures and the judiciary. There is also the Cabinet. Do these institutions fairly reflect the gender diversity of our country?

Political representation by women over the years has remained largely static. Only 10% of parliamentarians are women, while 24% are in the Senate and only 7% are state assemblypersons. In the Cabinet, only two out of 29 Ministers are women, a reduction in both numbers and percentage term from previous Cabinets.

What are the implications of these low numbers of women in political office? The main implication is that women-friendly laws are difficult to pass because men either have no inkling of these problems or are unsympathetic to them. The Domestic Violence Act took six years to pass through Parliament because of the objection of many men. Sexual harassment is a reality for many women, yet it is still not even a Bill to be debated. Increasing maternity leave from 60 days to 90 days is a long protracted debate. There is as yet still no law that compels the private sector to provide childcare for those who need it, although in the 10MP the Government encourages it.

Nowhere is the absence of women in decisionmaking making life more miserable for half of the women in Malaysia than in the Islamic Family Laws. Even though these were considered the most progressive in the world in 1984, they have been increasingly amended so as to give men more benefits and women less rights. Where previously no man could take on another wife without the written consent of his first wife, now he needs no such thing in several states. Where women always had the rights to her own property but could also demand a share of matrimonial property in recognition of her contribution to the household, now men also have the right to a share of her property, even though he may have contributed nothing to her acquisition of them. Faraid laws of distribution are being applied to an increasing number of assets including EPF and insurance, ensuring that widows do not benefit from them at all.

Is this just? And if Islam is a religion of justice and equality, are these laws in fact Islamic at all? While God always addressed men and women equally in the Quran and never said that women were lesser beings in His eyes, how did we come to have laws that disadvantage women? Would more women in such law and policymaking positions make a difference?

I believe they would. Malaysia signed and ratified the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1995. Amongst the policies we agreed to implement upon signing is to ensure that women must fill at least 30% of decision-making positions. Fifteen years after CEDAW nothing much has happened although the 10MP two days ago mentioned vaguely ‘increasing numbers of women in decisionmaking’ and ‘eliminating all forms of discrimination against women’. Does ‘increasing numbers’ mean up to 30%? How do they intend to do that? Does that mean that there will be 10 women Cabinet Ministers by 2015? What does eliminating discrimination against women mean when there are two systems of law which treat Muslim and non-Muslim women, otherwise equal citizens under the Federal Constitution, differently?

In March 2010 India, a country we tend to think of as less developed than us, saw its Parliament pass a law that ensured that at least 33% of all political candidates are women in local, state and national elections. No doubt this law has been controversial in India but opponents have not expressed doubts about women in such positions so much as about quotas in general.

The notion of quotas often elicits negative responses. But quotas are often a necessity to ensure diversity and equality, especially in the short term. In Norway, only a few years ago, frustrated with the low numbers of women on company Boards, the government passed a law requiring at least 40% of Board seats be given to women. Seeing as the Norwegian economy has not collapsed by this move but in fact has benefitted, other countries such as Germany and Spain are mulling similar moves.

In the UK, the Race Relations Act requires institutions such as universities to ensure not just racial but also gender and class diversity in their student and faculty intake. These are meant to be time-defined measures, to be eliminated once the goals have been reached just as our New Economic Policy was designed, although its expiry date seems to have been continually extended. Our coalition government also ensures that quotas for different ethnic groups are also met at the Cabinet level and in our legislatures. Yet while quotas are not new devices to address inequalities, there seems to be much resistance to quotas for women, even from some women who are indignant that they should be given priority because they are women, rather than because of their work. That may sound fair but the fact is, looking at the overall picture, the gender gap still exists in our country, as it does in the rest of Asia and that is borne out by the data in UNDP’s latest Human Development Report.

Leaving it up to natural forces doesn’t seem to work. When organizational structures are designed and implemented by men, for example in political parties, there is no chance for women to rise to the top in any meaningful way. What more when the social and cultural environment dictates that women cannot be leaders of such parties. Today in 2010, we have only one party that has had a woman as its President although it is disputable that she did it under her own steam. Until we stop having different wings for women , I don’t believe we will see female leaders at the top of these parties because the structures simply do not allow for it. Barring reorganization of every political party, only quotas will bring about that change and some parties are already embarking on this. Two days ago, PAS Muslimat, the women’s wing, passed a resolution calling for a Vice President post set aside for women. Not all women in the wing supported this resolution. Perhaps they are of the same mind as the Wanita UMNO state assemblywoman in Perak who said that a woman could not be Menteri Besar because she would need to participate in religious events with the Sultan. I’m so glad that it was not because women are naturally incompetent! As an aside, and perhaps not an insignificant one, it is interesting and ironic that the parties most enamoured of quotas are also those most opposed to quotas for women.

So, is diversity an opportunity to create unity? I would say yes, provided there is great effort made to ensure equality within that diversity. And are women capable of using that pportunity to build unity?

I believe that women are capable of building that unity if there is solidarity among all women to face the many injustices that affect not just women but all of society. There are far too many women who, having made it in a man’s world, as the cliché goes, then refuse to help other women do the same. Their logic is that “if I can do it, so can you”.

The problem with this logic is that it assumes that the playing field is level and that all women have exactly the same opportunities. Women themselves need to understand diversity and inequality among themselves, that just because you and your friends were able to go to university and find good jobs afterwards, does not mean that all women had the same chance. And while there are women who do not have those opportunities, your own success will remain token and meaningless to society as a whole. I am tired of people pointing to the women we now have in high positions in this country as proof of women’s progress in this country; if these women continue to be singular examples and have not opened doors for other women to do the same, these achievements do not signify real changes in our society because they are not sustainable. To be a pioneer, you must have people following in your wake. If you don’t, you did not open any new paths for anyone.

But it is understandable that women who have been successful tend to protect their undoubtedly hard-won positions by de-emphasising their sex. But does this make life easier for them? Most honest female politicians will tell you how difficult it is to push through women-friendly policies when there are too few women at the highest levels able to support each other. If there are 27 men and only 2 women in the Cabinet, how much clout would they have to push through policies that benefit women? Numbers mean a lot.

I love giving my favourite example of what having more women in high positions truly means. When the former president of Chile Michelle Bachelet came into office, one of the first things she did was to form a Cabinet that was 50% female. Her female Cabinet Ministers were also not confined to just ‘feminine’ portfolios but were given those that made good use of their own qualifications and competencies. But when it came to passing female-friendly policies, it was much easier for all of them because the numbers gave them the confidence to push these through.

Therefore solidarity, or unity, is posited on diversity and on numbers. And if you look beyond your own circles, which are necessarily small, when you look at all women as being your sisters, then the numbers are definitely there. When half the population is female, I fail to see how any politician, male or female, can lose if they promise to alleviate the status of women.

So are women uniquely able to build unity in this diverse country of ours? Yes, because women are builders not destroyers. We are interested in commonalities, rather than differences. A few years ago when I was in the US in the wake of September 11, I was asked by American officials what could be done to promote better understanding between the American people and people in the Muslim world. And my suggestion was, take a mother in the MidWest and a mother in Malaysia and get them to talk about their children and they will find they have plenty in common. Ultimately all mothers worry about their children, regardless of race or religion.

Similarly, all young women are concerned with common problems such as finding jobs, finding the right partner in life, problems of violence against women. When we talk about these things, the issues of race and religion recede because these issues cut across all communities. This I think is partly the appeal of 3R, that the issues we put forth are in no way limited to one community only.

If disunity can be equated to war, women are predisposed towards peace rather than to war. We understand the consequences of war and the impact it will have on families and communities. We also understand that it is women who inevitably bear the major burden of war everywhere in the world. It is invariably men who believe that war is the solution; witness whatis happening in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet it was two women from both sides of the religious fence, Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, who not only began the peace movement in Northern Ireland but went on to advocate for peace elsewhere in the world; it was the mothers of Russian soldiers who protested the deadly occupation of Afghanistan and the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, Cindy Sheehan, who braved being called unpatriotic and protested againt George Bush’s so-called war against terror.

And in Israel and Palestine, it is women who are calling for peace. To quote the words of Mariane Pearl, the widow of the journalist Daniel Pearl who was killed in Afghanistan, in the foreword to the book Sixty Years, Sixty Voices, “The foundations for lasting peace in the Middle East are embedded in the voices of these Israeli and Palestinian women. They know war and they know peace, they know weakness and strength and they know the human heart. In a torn land they find a common ground built out of wisdom, experience and because they have walked the walk. Here they stand and speak out; if we listen there is hope.”

In Malaysia we should note that last year when there were men screaming and shouting, trailing cow’s heads and burning places of worship, the voices of women were absent. Rarely do we participate in hatemongering, unless we aim to gain points with men, a futile exercise. We know that no matter what the hot issue might be, we still have to cook, clean and get the kids to school. It would be a whole lot easier if there were peace.

No less than our sisters in the rest of the world, we see no benefits in war, nor in disunity. And if we had the opportunities we would talk about how to improve society, not how to worsen it. Is eradicating discrimination against women bad for society? No it is not. Do we know of any advanced country that actively discriminates against women? No we don’t. Equality is part and parcel of progress. There is no democracy without equality, nor unity. And equality between the different races is meningless if there is not also gender equality.

To build unity, in all senses of the word, therefore is not difficult and the answer, to me, is obvious: treat women as equals and listen to us. It’s about time.

Thank you.

Published with permission. The website of the Malaysian chapter of The Young Women’s Christian Organization (YWCA) can be found here.

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