Flashback to the 1960s...Kepong was no more than a village to the north of Kuala Lumpur, with little going for it by way of entertainment outlets. The occasional concert and, surprisingly, even public forums led by the Labour Party were the main crowd pullers.

Enter Siew Sew Lan, labour activist and a prominent speaker for the party. Leading a group of women party members, she would walk around the village to persuade the grassroots to listen to their message of social justice.

The Labour Party, now defunct, initially stood for workers' rights, and later worked to raise political consciousness among ordinary people in rural communities, especially women.

A whole generation and more have passed since then and today, Siew, 63, is content managing a floral stall of her own in Kepong. However, she believes that much more work is still needed in terms of women's struggle for social justice and equal rights.

Little change for women

She views much of this country's progress a trajectory that is focused on the physical development of buildings and mega-projects as "superficial" and a major obstacle in any struggle for liberation.

Siew believes that economic growth has encouraged complacency in women and resistance against any effort to liberate themselves from a male-dominated environment. This is despite the fact that little has changed for the better for women since Merdeka.

"Malaysians' preoccupation with development has sidetracked what is important and relevant," she says. "Do people view these mega-projects as having changed their lives for the better?"

Although the numbers of women represented in parliament and state assemblies have increased, Siew notes that their involvement in politics has failed to correlate with attempts to push for women's liberation.

"Take for example the behaviour of women's wings of political parties, which seem active only to attract women's votes during election campaigns. Otherwise, there is probably a closed-door policy in their engagement with the grassroots," she says.

Women of the 60s

Within the Labour Party, she recalls, the idea of discrimination against women becoming office bearers like the treasurer or secretary was unheard of it was also common for political parties to hold activities for women every day of the week.

Siew says women's roles in political parties today have been reduced to that of pulling in votes, and that there are few women decision-makers.

She concedes that villagers in Kepong were initially not too happy to see young women organising political and social activities in her activist days. However, many relaxed their attitude once it became clear that party members were teaching the village women to read and write, an education that they would not necessarily have received otherwise.

Siew's first stint in the Labour Party was to fill the position of publicity bureau chief, which allowed her to develop a close relationship with the community in Kepong.

Extraordinarily, she took on the post at a time when she was also responsible for 10 siblings her mother had passed away when she was only 12.

She was the eldest in the family, and had no opportunity to learn how to read or write, or even speak formal Mandarin. Despite these inadequacies, Siew soon took on most of the important speaking roles for the party at various forums. She picked up the proper intonations of the language along the way.

"Politics was so interconnected with social life back then. I don't think these two elements could be pulled apart," she notes.

Today, though, the art of political dialogue is missing in much of society's transactions. To her, the rapport between social activities and political dialogues is an integral part of the development of a civil society and, in particular, the full acceptance of women in politics.

She also feels that the status of women has stagnated since the heyday of Merdeka. Still, she remains buoyed by optimism that "progress is still progress" and that this is a useful perspective to provide hope in moving forward.

"We should not remain fatalists. Obstacles provide the impetus to change things. If not for the pressure of colonialism and the spirit to fight that oppression, how do you think we would have arrived at Merdeka?" Siew reasons.

Detained under ISA

Siew is among the few women from the labour and left-oriented movement who have agreed to their comments being documented for posterity.

Many women who had participated in sizeable numbers in similar labour and left struggles in the past, have shied away from media attention.

Siew is not bothered about hiding her background, even after going through 11 years of detention under the Internal Security Act (ISA) from a round-up after the racial riots of May 13, 1969.

Since she was released in 1980, she has been on the receiving end of warnings to stay away from advocacy work and politics.

"I did nothing wrong. People should not allow their fear of the ISA to avoid struggling for improvements," she says.

Siew's story is among those that remind Malaysians that the "Merdeka struggle" is far from over for women. As she says, the fight for freedom cannot and must not end with Merdeka.