A Promise Already Not Kept

UPDATE:

JAG has made some corrections to the statement below:

1. There are 129 women candidates overall, not 128. (This is due to the difficulty in ascertaining the gender of a candidate just from the name alone.)
2. As pointed out by some commenters, Carol Chew and Teresa Kok are indeed standing in Seputeh, not Bukit Bintang.
3. There are 11 sexist MPs still being fielded, not 13. These are:
i. Bung Mokhtar Radin (BN-Kinabatangan)
ii. Mohamed bin Aziz (BN-Sri Gading)
iii. Badaruddin bin Amiruldin (BN-Jerai)
iv. Idris Haron (BN-Tangga Batu)
v. S. Samy Vellu (BN-Sungai Siput)
vi. Dr Mohamad Hayati bin Othman (PAS-Pendang)
vii. Salahuddin Ayub (PAS-Kubang Kerian)
viii. Shabudin Yahaya (BN-Permatang Berangan)
ix. Datuk Jasmin Mohamad (BN-Sungai Dua)
x. Tuan Haji Wan Junaidi bin Tuanku Jaafar (BN-PBB-Santubong)
xi. Abdul Fatah Harun (PAS-Bukit Tuku)

The previous 6th Raja Dato’ Ahmad Zainuddin is not fielded in this election. He was Larut MP before. Dato’ Haji Muhamad is not contesting and Abdul Fatah Harun has moved from Rantau Panjang to Bukit Tuku (Kelantan state seat).


ORIGINAL POST:
Before the elections are even over, one promise has already been broken by all political parties. They have not fielded significantly more women candidates at all. Here's the analysis of the female candidates fielded by the Joint Action Group on Gender Equality (JAG).

Joint Action Group for Gender Equality
Press Statement
27 February 2008

Political Parties Have Not Achieved the 30% Quota for Women
in the 2008 General Election

The Joint Action Group for Gender Equality (JAG) is disappointed that the percentage of women candidates nominated to stand at this 12th General Election is a dismal 8.2 percent of the total number of 1568 seats contested. This is a far cry from the Government’s target of ensuring at least 30 percent women in decision-making positions.

Only 128 women candidates are fielded to stand, out of a total 1568 parliamentary and state seats. While there is an increase all round in women candidates, but the increment of 2.2 per cent is still minimal (6.0% in 2004 and 8.2% in 2008).

JAG is also disappointed that political parties have chosen to pit one woman candidate against another. For example, in Bukit Bintang (Carol Chew, MCA and Teresa Kok, DAP); Lembah Pantai (Dato’ Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, UMNO and Nurul Izzah Anwar, PKR); and Bukit Lanjan (Yong Dai Ying, Gerakan and Elizabeth Wong, PKR).

This defeats the objective of getting more women into politics. If the parties are serious about wanting more women in decision making positions, they should have nominated women in winnable seats which are the party strongholds.

The continued nomination of identified sexist MPs, in particular Bung Mokhtar Radin (BN-Kinabatangan), Mohamed bin Aziz (BN-Sri Gading), and Baharuddin bin Amiruldin (BN-Jerai) who have been repeat offenders over the past 10 years also constitute a disregard and disrespect for women voters.

JAG monitored the number of candidates for this 2008 General Election and the results are as follows:




Source: various newspapers, NST, The Star, The Sun, 25 February 2008. NST, **25 March 2004. Online Website: www.star.org.my (2008)

Several observations can be made and they are as follows:

1. More effort is definitely expected from the political parties. The promotion of at least 30 per cent for women at all levels of decision making process is an affirmative action and temporary measure. This policy is contained in Chapter 13 of the Ninth Malaysia Plan (2006-2010). It is also a commitment echoed by the Prime Minister.

In YAB Dato’ Seri Abdullah Badawi’s speech at the 2005 inaugural lecture of the Abdullah Ahmad Badawi Women’s Institute of Management (W.I.M) annual lecture series, YAB said:

“When the history of the 21st century is recorded, let Malaysia be mentioned in the context of not only progress and achievement for the country, but also the advancement and empowerment and emancipation of women.”

1. Sexist MP, Datuk Mohamad Said Yusuf, Jasin has been dropped from the 2008 Election. This is a victory for the JAG’s campaign against sexism and discrimination at the Parliament. However, there are still thirteen (13) more sexist MPs who have been nominated for this General Election. They are:

i. YB Bung Mokhtar Radin (BN-Kinabatangan)
ii. YB Mohamed bin Aziz (BN-Sri Gading)
iii. YB Badaruddin bin Amiruldin (BN-Jerai)
iv. YB Idris Haron (BN-Tangga Batu)
v. YB S. Samy Vellu (BN-Sungai Siput)
vi. YB Raja Dato’ Ahmad Zainuddin bin Raja Haji Omar (BN-Larut)
vii. YB Dr Mohamad Hayati bin Othman (PAS-Pendang)
viii. YB Salahuddin Ayub (PAS-Kubang Kerian)
ix. YB Shabudin Yahaya (BN-Permatang Berangan)
x. YB Datuk Jasmin Mohamad (BN-Sungai Dua)
xi. Timbalan Yang di-Pertua Dato’ Haji Muhamad bin Abdullah
xii. Tuan Haji Wan Junaidi bin Tuanku Jaafar (BN-PBB-Santubong)
xiii. YB Abdul Fatah Harun (PAS-Rantau Panjang)

2. As mentioned, women candidates are being pitted against one another. It is unfortunate that political parties view this as a “sexy” election ‘strategy’. This gives voters the false hope that the political parties are championing for women’s rights and equality. Yet if we assess their performance for this election, they have hardly reached the 30% mark. Fielding a woman candidate against another is also counter productive as it cuts back the affirmative action of pushing for at least 30% women representation in Parliament or the State Assemblies.

3. Women candidates are placed in “difficult” seats and not WINNABLE seats. In the case of Lembah Pantai and Seputeh, young women are pitted against strong women incumbents.

Given the many obstacles women face in the political arena, a temporary measure is not just in increasing numbers but making sure these women will win these seats. Most of these women candidates are contesting for the first time and are armed with very little experience to deal with the challenges of the election.

4. Women candidates are not featured well in the Media. They are portrayed as either young against the old (Nurul Izzah Anwar and Dato Seri Shahrizat) or as service-only MPs (Chew Mei Fun, Theresa Kok). This tends to belittle the issues that they represent.

5. There is a significant increase in PAS women candidates, from only nine candidates to fifteen candidates in this election – an increase of 40%. Seven women are contesting for the Parliament seats in 2008, when there was only one woman for Parliament in 2004.

JAG would also like to stress that numbers are not the only effective indicators. Participation of women has to go beyond numbers and to move towards a qualitative transformation of women in shaping national decision making processes.

Following the 12th General Elections, JAG urges the political parties to nominate more women into local councils. At the moment, women appointed at the local authority level are only 12.5 per cent.

Before and during the next general elections, some temporary measures that political parties can take will include enabling factors such as:

∑ Train women in leadership skills and knowledge.

∑ Conduct gender awareness programmes with men and women. This will enable every party member to understand women’s realities, especially in women’s quest for political leadership. The programmes will also prepare them to be more accepting of women taking on leadership roles by overcoming social and cultural barriers. Field women candidates in winnable seats while veterans should take on the challenge to contest in tougher constituencies.

∑ Allocate more human and monetary resources to increase the outreach of women candidates

The media can also play a role and allocate more space and air time on stories on these women candidates

JAG looks forward to having more women in the parliament, state assemblies and local councils as women in public life are important to democratic change and gender equality.


Issued by
Joint Action Group for Gender Equality (JAG)
Pusat Janadaya (Empower)
Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO)
Sisters in Islam (SIS)
All Women’s Action Society (AWAM)
Women’s Centre for Change (WCC), Penang

__________________________________________________________________________________

JAG's call for the temporary measure of having reserved seats for women is not without precedent. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have had reserved seats in national, state and local aseemblies for almost as long as they have been independent nations. The result has meant that more women have been able to participate in decisionmaking at all levels.In Bangladesh in the 1997 union council elections, 13000 women were elected to fill the seats reserved for women. In India, reserved seats have allowed more than 1 million women to participate in decisionmaking at the grassroots level.In Pakistan, the 2000-2001 local government elections brought in 42,049 women into local governments.

There are still many problems with these provisions because women face many challenges in participating meaningfully due to financial, class and other socio-cultural constraints. Men have remained in control in many cases by ensuring that the reserved seats for women are taken by women within their control, for instance wives and daughters who are economically dependent on them. Women often find themselves kept out of meetings and their participation limited to what are seen as only women's issues. More educated elite women get elected than those who are poor, thus issues of poorer communities are often not addressed adequately. Still, on the whole, the reserved seats have contributed to greater participation of women in the political life of their countries and have benefitted local communities by stressing social programmes such as literacy and micro-credit.

But the important point is this: the Indian, Pakistan and Bangladeshi governments had as their starting point a conviction that women and other minorities needed to be represented in legislative and decisionmaking bodies.They recognised that without some form of affirmative action, the playing field is just not level enough to ensure that everyone has an equal chance. So seats for women are reserved ( as are seats for minority groups) until the day comes when people are convinced and confident enough of the abilities of women to represent them to no longer look at their sex before they are chosen.

Given the clear disproportion between the numbers of women in our population and their representation in elected bodies, perhaps it is time we really looked at reserved seats. 8.2% of seats, and that's assuming that all of the women win (which in cases where they are pitted against other women, they won't), is a pittance, when women are almost 50% of the population. It also explains why laws that benefit women either take forever to pass, or are not passed at all.

Besides it's the 21st century...why be so last century?