International Women's Day on March 8 will be an occasion to commemorate the success women have achieved so far in Malaysia, to reflect on the distance yet to go, evaluate the significance of asserting women's economic, social and political equality in the context of Malaysia and the challenges such an endeavour inevitably entails.
The Law Reform Marriage and Divorce Act 1976 implemented in 1980s institutionalised monogamy in respect of non-Muslims and removed the iniquities of Mary Ng's judicial decision by which according to Chinese personal law, the man could take not only another wife without the first's consent but also divorce her for being talkative, barren or disrespectful to the mother-in-law.
As a strong statement that physical violence against women at home would not be tolerated, the Domestic Violence Act was passed in 1994.
Violence has since then been extended from physical to emotional distress, the venue from home to the workplace as when in 1999, the then human resources minister launched the Code of Practice on the Prevention and Eradication of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace.
In that same year, by an amendment to Guardianship of Infants Act, women were conferred equal guardianship rights as men.
But it was only in August last year that women really achieved the milestone of procuring the amendment of Article 8(2) of the Federal Constitution to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex.
Henceforward, it will be a cornerstone by which to review law, policy, practice and implementation with the objective of eradicating gender inequality.
To be sure, there are still miles to go in the journey to full equality.
Legislation is one thing; ingrained attitude of ordinary men and women or the helplessness single mothers feel when bureaucrats thwart them from signing official documents in matters pertaining to their children.
Road ahead still long
However, a significant step forward has already been made.
Women cannot be ignored simply because worldwide, the impulse of the Age is to promise equality and autonomy to women as heralded by the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw); because even in Malaysia, though forming about half the population, more women than men registered and turned out to vote, forming a political force of 59 percent of total voters in the last 1999 general elections.
In the corridors of power, we already have women ministers for Trade and Industry, Woman and Family Development, and a woman deputy minister for Culture, Arts and Tourism.
Notwithstanding few women were fielded as candidates, the number of women elected as members of parliament has increased from 15 in the 1995 general elections to 20 in 1999 spanning both sides of the political divide.
A woman now holds the position as central banker, another albeit briefly, the office of attorney-general. We also have women judges and a woman leader of a political party.
More important than just political and official positions is the fact that women are not denied opportunities to participate fully in the economic social and cultural life of the country. One just has to recall how many women undergraduates there are in tertiary institutions, women executives in banks, corporations, retail outlets, women athletes in competitive sports, women performers in drama, theatre, playwriting, dance and so on.
Not forgetting that at the vanguard of women's causes, there has mushroomed a plethora of women organisations such as Women's Aid Organisation, Women's Agenda for Change, the All Women Action Society, Tenaganita, Sisters in Islam, Womens Candidacy Initiative and Wanita Jamaah Islah Malaysia, to name a few.
But the road ahead is still long because the interpretations of several of the sacred text of religions as they are practised in Malaysia, including Islam, Catholicism, Buddhism and Hinduism, are perceived to be denying women the full measure of equality as compared with their western sisters.
Sisters in Islam (SIS) deserves attention because it seeks to address the problems Muslim women, in particular, face in the interpretation and implementation of Syariah law — especially on matters of divorce, polygamy, custody, maintenance, and division of matrimonial property — which when comparing with civil laws as applied to non-Muslim women, appears less favourable to Muslim women.
By reinterpreting dictated rules by men clerics, engaging in a feministic ijtihad , emphasising the egalitarian ethics of Islam and deconstructing Syariah-related rules in a more women-friendly egalitarian manner, SIS, for example, would strive to narrow, if not close, the gap between Muslim women and their non-Muslim counterparts in relation to women empowerment and rights.
Significance in democracy, religion, economy
The strive by Malaysian women to achieve equality and autonomy, and their achievements so far in that regard as above mentioned, have, in my opinion, the following significance to the country.
First, the assertion of women's right to equality cannot but will help to foster eventually a culture of rights recognition and a general upholding of human rights from which the advancement of women's rights is an offshoot.
Critics of the government and opposition members have long decried to no avail that human rights have been violated by the Internal Security Acts detention without trial.
Imagine, however, whether such a criticism will or will not be heeded by the powers to be if (say) all of a sudden, women who have become 60 percent of the voters suddenly are unified in placing the abolition of ISA as being of even greater importance than the sectional feminist issues traditionally affecting women only!
It is, therefore, hoped that the fight for women's rights will foster the requisite democratic and egalitarian attitudes necessary to dismantle in due course the architecture of racial, social and economic inequalities that has bedeviled nation building since independence.
Second, against the backdrop of the current contest between conservative and moderate voices on the definition of the soul of Islam in this country that will affect Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the momentum that has so far gathered to empower women has a definitely moderating influence on Islamic discourse and remains yet one of the strongest bulwarks against religious conservatism and extremity.
Thirdly, the fact that Malaysian women work and contribute, according to official statistics, close to 38 percent of labour force of the country must explain in part our economic success compared with the lack thereof on the part of many other Islamic countries in the Middle East. Although these countries are willing to spend billions to wean their economies from oil, they overlook the fact that the real resource of any economy is its people. Discouraging or denying half of a country's people the chance to be educated and to contribute productively to its economy is tantamount to stopping oil from being pumped from half of their oil wells!
On an individual level, the assertion of women's economic, social and political equality ought to be as important to men as it is to women as it concerns the dignity and autonomy of women who are their mothers, wives and daughters.
The significance of asserting women's equal rights, however, goes beyond on the broader societal level. In organising as a political force to effect change in betterment of womens status, women can in that process serve broader objectives of fostering a common culture of rights recognition, resisting ultra conservative religious extremism and contributing to better living standards and economic well-being of the country.
Men as active collaborators
The challenge for Malaysian women is how to fight for and attain rights to equality, with men as active collaborators, rather than combatants — without the extremities evinced by western feminists of bra-burning, male-bashing or gender strife.
More important than securing mere equal access to educational, economic, social and political opportunities is personal autonomy that can only come with freedom from emotional and other insecurities inculcated in part by patriarchal structures of culture and thought.
For that a woman, in aspiring for equality, has to strike a balance between realities and ideology. She has to be patient and realise that a system as complex as human life and organisation based on traditional division of labour and roles drawn on sex lines cannot just be simply and quickly reconfigured in a radical way overnight without precipitating undesirable consequences of fractured family system and juvenile delinquency as the western experience evinces.
To avail equal opportunities to women as men is not to make a women equal in the sense of being same to men in all respects and simply doing everything a man does without consideration of essential biological and reproductive differences as if they just do not exist.
In other words, she has to also learn to accept and be comfortable with the reality of these biological and reproductive differences and the restrictions they inevitably sometimes impose and not allow notional and abstract ideological demands of equality override her acceptance and appreciation of the uniqueness of being female.
JEFFREY is a consultant and freelance writer who lives by the credo 'Woman's equality to man is not a claim . . . rather a concession!'
