COMMENT On International Women’s Day March 8, many messages and greetings celebrating women’s multiple roles were sent to women.

 

However, there is little for women to celebrate in 2015, centuries and decades after women had marched, protested, burnt bras and were punished and killed for standing up for recognition of their rights within the family, in the economic, cultural, social and political fields.

 

No country has reached gender parity and equality, said the United Nations in its message on International Women’s Day 2015. The Beijing Platform of Action adopted in 1995 in Beijing at the fourth UN World conference on Women was a key policy document for gender equality.

 

Women do not enjoy equal rights over property, land, education or political positions in many countries and cultures.

 

Women constitute 70 percent of the 1.2 billion people living in poverty throughout the world. When women do not enjoy economic, social, cultural and political rights, they become vulnerable to violence, exploitation and all other forms of abuse.

 

Political leadership

 

More than 50 percent of the voters in Malaysia are women. However, women’s participation in political leadership in this country is low.

 

Currently, women account for only 10.4 percent of the total members of parliament (MPs) in the Lower House. Only 11 percent of the state assembly members are women.

 

When women have low representation in decision-making processes, how can they promote rights of women and gender issues as a priority in the parliamentary agenda?

 

It is a challenge for the small number of women MPs to influence legislation for gender equality in Malaysia. Malaysian politicians have made derogatory remarks about women in and outside Parliament. Such behaviour indicates the hostile environment for women in politics.

 

There are laws too that discriminate women’s participation at the leadership level in political parties.

 

Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng ( right ) on March 8 said, “Three months after setting a 30 percent quota for women leaders in its central executive committee, the DAP has yet to hear from the Registrar of Societies (ROS) on whether the party has the green light to implement it.”

 

Note that the 30 percent quota for women leadership in the DAP comes the UN Platform of Action for gender equality adopted 20 years ago.

 

Lim said this in a walkabout for International Women’s Day this year. Only a walkabout for women, not a large protest for women’s rights that DAP in Penang could have organized as the party in power in the state.

 

But to its credit, at least the DAP is making some efforts to increase women’s leadership in politics.

 

Civil society leadership

 

Civil society in Malaysia is diverse. There are charity and philanthropic organisations, groups working on human rights, women, consumer issues, environment, culture and the arts, etc. Even so, leadership in the NGO sector remains a male domain.

 

For example, women rarely helm consumer, human rights or environmental groups.

 

Prominent NGO women leaders are primarily from women’s groups or organisations they have founded themselves.

 

 

 

Labour force

Women’s participation in the labour force in Malaysia was 52.4 percent in 2013, which means for every 100 women, 52 are in the labour force.

 

In 2014, 68 percent of the new students in institutions of higher learning in Malaysia were female.

 

However, according to the labour force survey in 2014 by the Department of Statistics, women managers make up only 3.2 percent and women professionals only 14.8 percent, indicating that most women are in low- paying positions.

 

Further, female employees in the private sector do not enjoy the same constitutional protection against discrimination or enjoy the same benefits as women in the public sector.

 

 

 

Women in food production

 

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) theme for World Food Day several years ago was “Women Feed the World.” However, women’s contributions to food production in Malaysia have not been recognised.

 

Women grow rice, vegetables and fruits in many villages. In Sarawak, for example, women in the longhouses grow a variety of food crops or collect vegetables from the forests. These women sell their produce or whatever they collect mainly along the roads or in small shops.

 

The income from whatever they grow or collect from the forests is low. Access to markets that would pay more for their produce is difficult due to poor transportation and distance from urban centres.

Additionally, the women in the interiors of Sarawak do not have access to training to improve their agricultural production and marketing.

 

Women as triple consumers

 

Malaysia is a consumer society. Increasing prices for food and other consumer goods place greater burden on women as they are triple consumers - they buy for the family, for their husbands or partners and themselves.

 

Women will face greater challenges in managing their household expenditure when the goods and services tax comes into force in April because prices of food and goods for daily consumption will increase.

 

Women in many countries such as the United States, France, India, Australia, South Korea, etc have taken to the streets in protest against hikes in food prices.

 

Women in Malaysia have many reasons to protest. And they must, for it is through protests that women will achieve equality for themselves and improve the lives of their children and families.

 

 

JOSIE FERNANDEZ is an Asian Public Intellectual Fellow.