Exhausted and at wit's end, Rosnah (not her real name) was unable to hold back her tears as she related her torrid experiences of the past three months.

After moving week after week from one friend's house to another, the 32-year-old mother of three only gained a respite when her application for temporary housing was approved by a women's shelter in Kuala Lumpur.

"I am under so much stress. If I was alone, I could have coped much better but I have children and we have to squeeze into a small room. I can stay here for another month and a half, but I really don't know what is going to happen next," she said as she wept.

Rosnah is among hundreds of Malaysian women married to foreign workers who have found themselves deprived of a home overnight and are saddled with the sole responsibility for their children after being separated from their foreign-born husbands.

But unlike many of these cases, Rosnah's Pakistani husband had not abandoned her - he was arrested by Malaysian immigration officials after his attempts to renew his work permit ran into difficulties.

Faced with her husband's imminent deportation, Rosnah seems doomed to face the future as a single mother of a young family.

Aegile Fernandez, the Migrant Desk co-ordinator of labour rights organisation Tenaganita, said Rosnah's case was not unique.

"Thousands of migrant workers arrive in Malaysia every year. Many are single men who are contracted to work here for many years," she said.

"Some of them fall in love and get but when their work permits expire, they are either forced to return or they are arrested and deported. Their families are often left behind to fend for themselves."

Fernandez said that, ironically, the rising number of single-parent families resulting from unions with migrant labourers is the result of strict citizenship laws which discriminate not only against Malaysian women married to foreign men, but also against those who are employed in low-skilled jobs.

In the first instance, there is no mistaking the gender bias in the law when constitutional clauses on citizenship by registration apply only to married women whose husbands are citizens of Malaysia, but are silent in the reverse situation.

Furthermore, while high-skilled foreigners often successfully obtain permanent residency status if they are married to local women, this is virtually impossible for low-skilled migrant workers, many of whom may have toiled for years in the country's construction, plantation or services industries.

Yet this is the area which raises the most concern, since the larger number of low-skilled male migrant workers automatically translates into a higher proportion of broken families among the poorest and most vulnerable.

Paternalistic mentality

Recognising the problem, Malaysian women's organisations have been fighting for years to eliminate gender bias in legislation.

Although Article 8(2) of the Federal Constitution was amended in September 2001 to prohibit discrimination based on gender, most laws and government policies have not kept pace with this.

Maria Chin Abdullah of the Women's Development Collective, a non-government organisation, said women's groups first sent a joint memorandum to the government in 1986 calling for amendments to all laws that discriminate against women.

Almost two decades later, most of the biases remain, including the discriminatory clauses in citizenship laws.

"Some of our laws are archaic because they date back to British colonial days. There is still the traditional assumption that women should go to their husband's country. And mindsets haven't changed. There are still ingrained prejudices among our legislators," she said.

The intractable attitude of legislators was clearly evident during a parliamentary debate in 2001 when women parliamentarians proposing amendments to the constitution were noisily heckled and taunted.

One opposition MP, Teresa Kok, was told rudely to " Kahwinlah Bangla " (Go marry a Bangladeshi) when she spoke in favour of giving equal citizenship opportunities to foreign men married to Malaysian women.

When handling social welfare cases involving broken families left behind by departing migrant workers, government officials have more often held up such cases as moral caution to local women against falling prey to the charms of 'handsome' foreigners.

While public awareness on such issues is necessary, Tenaganita's Fernandez said the manner with which the government has dealt with the issue is not only ineffective but does not help alleviate the difficulty faced by those already in this predicament.

"The women that we spoke to said their husbands are gentle, caring and loving. They have no regrets about getting married to the migrant workers. Why should they be denied of the right to fall in love and marry the person they choose?" she said.

As marital problems are caused by external factors, Fernandez said the government should work towards extending the social network to assist families left behind by departing workers.

"The government should be considering how it can help support these families by finding jobs for the women or providing their children with free education," she said.

More crucially, the authorities should not add to the problem by refusing to renew work permits for workers married to local women, thereby forcibly splitting up families, said Fernandez.

A worrying development for social workers has been recent moves between Malaysia and labour supply countries to regulate migrant worker recruitment policies.

For instance, under a Memorandum of Understanding between Malaysia and Bangladesh signed last October, contract workers are prohibited from marrying Malaysian citizens. If they do so, they will lose their jobs immediately and be sent back home.

This, said Fernandez, will result in more women and children being thrown into a similar predicament as Rosnah.

Emotional scars

For Rosnah, the longer term problems can already be foreseen. With her husband detained, she has been forced to quit her job in order to care for her children.

"My husband used to work at night so he would take care of the children while I worked in the daytime. Now, I cannot work because I have to take care of my children," she said.

"I converted to Islam to marry my husband. My family wants me to divorce him and leave the children before they will take me back. At most, they are willing to get them air tickets to go to Pakistan."

Meanwhile, her young children - an eight-year-old daughter and a pair of six-year-old twin sons - have already been dealt emotional scars which will be difficult to heal.

"My children have sleepless nights. They have nightmares and call out for their father. In the first few months, my daughter refused to even eat. Now, I have to take her out of school because I cannot afford to keep her there anymore," she said.

Social workers like Fernandez are well aware of the risks of such developments.

"We have seen a few cases where the women, left with no other choice, have had to turn to sex work to support themselves and their families. Children too have to suffer. They receive no education and they have to deal with the (stigma) that their mother married a migrant worker," she said.

There is little likelihood that these children could one day break free of the cycle of poverty.

Full gender equality

At the moment, Fernandez said NGOs and religious groups provide most of the assistance available to foreign spouses.

Tenaganita, for one, runs a foreign spouse programme whereby members meet to provide support for one another and exchange information on their legal rights.

"A lot of it has to do with documentation but they also discuss procedures for divorce and separation as well as custodial matters," said Fernandez.

As for more permanent measures, WDC's Maria said the struggle continues.

She expressed cautious optimism over Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's pledge several years ago to ensure full gender equality by 2005.

"There can be change. In the past, we have made headway in some areas such as amendments to rape laws and domestic violence laws but the government also included other provisions which we didn't ask for and (are problematic).

"The government's mind is still not sensitive to gender issues. We have to raise our concerns (with discriminatory laws) again and again. So we will have to see what happens by 2005," she added.

YAP MUN CHING, a former malaysiakini journalist, is currently pursuing further studies in the United Kingdom. This article was commissioned as a part of the Asian Migration Trail project, an initiative by InterPress Service Asia-Pacific.