Pressure group tells Women’s Ministry to table white paper for gender equality among lawmakers
KUALA LUMPUR, March 8 — Projek Stability and Accountability for Malaysia (Projek SAMA) today urged Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri to table a white paper to ensure women were proportionately represented in the federal and state legislatures.
It made this call following the International Parliamentary Union (IPU) findings that ranked Malaysia 150 out of 190 countries for women’s representation among lawmakers.
At the moment, only 30 out of 222 member of parliaments (MPs) in Malaysia are women.
“We have less than one woman for every seven MPs. The situation is worse at the state level, where only 12.17 per cent of elected state assemblypersons are women, or less than one woman for every eight assemblyperson.
“Across 13 state legislatures this percentage ranges from 3.13 per cent in Terengganu and 26.79 per cent in Johor,” Projek SAMA said in a statement today.
The group said that for International Women’s Day to be meaningful, this under-representation of women cannot be treated as normal or business as usual.
“Minister for Women, Family and Community Development Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri should commit to producing a white paper on women’s political representation.
“For the record, the Penang state government led by Chow Kon Yeow presented a white paper to introduce top-up women-only additional seats (TWOAS), as a structural remedy to address the under-representation of women in elections and legislatures due to the single-member nature of the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system,” it said.
TWOAS was mooted by the former exco member Chong Eng who led the Penang Women’s Development Corporation (PWDC).
“While the TWOAS project was unfortunately blocked by intra-party power struggle, the Penang white paper, available in both Malay is still relevant for the debate.
“The ministry can use the white paper as an entry point to resume the discussion and also seek PWDC’s expertise.
“We also expect the parliamentary special select committee (PSSC) on Women, Children and Social Development, consisting of Yeo Bee Yin as the chair and eight other MPs to pursue this matter as a committee and also in parliamentary debates in this sitting that would last till March 27,” it added.
While the call for a minimum 30 per cent women representation had been made since the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995, little progress had been made in Malaysia, Projek SAMA said.
When the IPU first compiled the data on percentage of women parliamentarians in January 1997, Malaysia then ranked 60th with 15 (7.8 per cent) out of 192 parliamentarians being women.
“Over time, other countries have progressed much and left us behind. Today, Malaysia is not only lagging among developed countries, but also amongst developing countries,” Projek SAMA said.
According to IPU’s findings, the top 20 countries include 11 developing countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia — (1) Rwanda, 61.3 per cent, (2) Cuba, 55.7 per cent, (3) Nicaragua, 53.9 per cent, (4) Mexico, 50.4 per cent, (6) United Arab Emirates, 50 per cent, (8) Costa Rica, 47.4 per cent, (10) Bolivia, 46.2 per cent, (11) Senegal, 46.1 per cent, (13) South Africa, 45.8 per cent, (19) Namibia, 44.2 per cent and (20) Mozambique, 43.2 per cent.
In South-east Asia, Malaysia is behind: (33) Timor-Leste, 38.5 per cent ,(63) Vietnam, 30.6 per cent, (69) Singapore, 29.3 per cent, (83) The Philippines, 27.3 per cent, (107) Laos, 22.0 per cent, (108) Indonesia, 21.9 per cent, (122) Thailand, 19.4 per cent, and (149) Cambodia, 13.6 per cent.
In the Organisations of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Malaysia is behind not only the above-mentioned (6) United Arab Emirates, 50 per cent, (11) Senegal, 46.1 per cent, (20) Mozambique, 43.2 per cent, and (108) Indonesia, 21.9 per cent, but also (45) Albania, 35.7 per cent, (49) Uzbekistan, 34.6 per cent, (50) Cameroon and Uganda, 33.9 per cent, (80) Egypt, 27.7 per cent, and (119) Saudi Arabia, 19.9 per cent, among others.
