Quota is a bad word in Malaysia. Almost like, god-forbid, Perkasa or Ibrahim Ali.
So, one can imagine the difficulty of talking about women quota. Some felt it is condescending, I know many successful women, not least my colleagues in politics, who are embarrassed by the mere mention of women quota. Some felt it is another sham, bypassing merits and talents to give preferential treatment to undeserving ones.
So when my party, the Democratic Action Party (DAP), announced recently that it will impose a 30% women quota on the composition of the party’s elected Central Executive Committee (CEC), there were both voices of support and dissent.
Perak’s Aulong state assemblyman, Saudara Leow Thye Yih, for example warned that such move is akin to Barisan Nasional’s infamous quota system – overlooking merits for tokenism or worse, cronyism. He, however did not disagree with more women representation, but he called for the 30% to be made a policy target instead of a legally-binding quota.
Rule of the game: One standard, but who’s standard?
First of all, let me just say simply that I fully welcome and support the new DAP constitutional amendment to include a 30% women quota in its CEC. At the risk of sounding biased, I believe this demonstrates the progressive spirit of DAP, which as early as 1992, was the first political party in Malaysia to press for a full Ministry status for the Office of Women’s Affairs then held under the Prime Minister’s Department. This was eventually achieved in 2001. (The likes of Rohani Abdul Karim, Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, Ng Yen Yen and even Najib Razak have the DAP to thank for their post)
But secondly, and more importantly, I want to divert our attention away from the quota. The whole idea is really gender mainstreaming. In other words, what we are trying to do is to reconstruct the overwhelmingly masculine and patriarchal “rule of the game” in our society.
What is this rule of the game?
One of my favourite French philosophers, Simone De Beauvoir put it bluntly, “Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior”.
Today, even when we say that there is only one standard used to treat everyone, the standard is usually framed from a male’s point of view, whether it is in the corporate sector, politics, government or civil society (NGOs).
Let me give you an example: When I was local government councillor in Majlis Perbandaran Seberang Perai (MPSP), I sat in the One-Stop Centre (OSC) Committee which approves local development. One important regulation is, in any development, the developer must provide 10% of the land as “open space”, a public space for recreation. It is a good policy but what do we usually get from this policy? A football field!
Now don’t get me wrong, women do play football, and use the neighbourhood field for various other activities. But do you see what I mean, even this good piece of policy, which is seemly gender neutral, ended up mostly serving only half the members of the human race – the males, and even then a rather limited set – mostly young, healthy-type. What about children, toddlers, senior citizens? Or those who are physically-challenged? Not to mention women.
This is what we are trying to get at. Quotas are provisional measures, one of the many steps, to change this “rule of the game” so to speak.
Women quota is a recognition of the stark reality
Many think of quota, sometimes unfortunately, as a form of handicap differential, like in golf – but at some level they may be correct; handicap is supposed to level the ground so that players with different level of proficiency can compete with each other on equal terms.
But being an engineer, I prefer to see quota as enzymes, some kind of catalyst to speed up the process of mainstreaming gender equality in this overwhelmingly male-rule-of-the-game society. And when we say 30%, we are looking at a critical mass, another scientific concept, the minimum number needed to arrive at a game-changing turning point.
Some argue that women and men should be allowed to fight their way up, to prove themselves worthy of leadership positions rather than be given an unfair advantage through quota. Such argument, however, essentially puts the blame squarely on women for “not being up there”.
This, again in the words of De Beauvoir, is “double dealing”, when we “require woman to play the game fairly while [denying] her the indispensable trump cards through distrust and hostility”.
Because the truth is, women are severely under-represented at all levels of decision making, from the village committees to local councils to state legislative assemblies to board rooms to Parliament.
Today, the Dewan Rakyat today has 22 women members out of 222, a mere 9.9%, while women totaled about 11.5% in state assemblies. While the number of Ministers in Prime Minister Najib Razak’s Cabinet has increased from 28 when he took power in April 2009 to 35 in the last Cabinet reshuffle in June this year, the number of its women members remained the same, two. Since Independence, the number of women in the our Cabinet has never exceeded a pittance two.
According to a recent report from the UK, in Europe and the US, men hold 89% and 83% of the top executive positions in private companies. In Asia, the number goes up to 96%. In all three regions combined, women made up of only 11% of the top executive positions out of about 3000 such spots in the 300 companies surveyed. In Malaysia, women consist of about 10% of executive board members in the private sector.
The reality is stark. This is 35 years after CEDAW, 19 years after the Beijing Platform for Action, 14 years after Malaysia established a full blown Women’s Ministry, all aiming to empower women including in public life.
And my god, to think that some of us still believe that it is solely the individual capacity of women which determines whether they make it to the top or not. This is not only naive but also is in denial of the data at hand. We have to recognise that the “rule of the game” is the ultimate stumbling block – call it glass ceiling or sticky floor if you want – to gender equality in our society.
It’s time to call the Emperor naked and not pretend that everything is fine.
Will women quota alone change anything?
Having more women at the top definitely helps. Again, the concept of critical mass is important: 9 women in the CEC is definitely a greater voice than 3 currently. And there are many studies which show the advantages of bigger women participation in public life. It is really both a logical and the right thing to do – not mobilising the strength of half of the human race does not make sense, and every woman has the right to realise her highest potential in life.
But I think it is so important to stress again and again that quota is just one part of the whole campaign for gender mainstreaming. We need political awareness on gender equality so that not only women will speak up on women issues but men as well will speak up for gender equality, we need skills training for younger leaders especially women because otherwise women quota will just be another sham. If no efforts are taken to discover, build and support potential female leaders from early on, then putting their names when election comes completely destroy the whole idea of women empowerment, reducing women quota to tokenism and the concept of gender equality to mere lip service.
We need education on gender, we need anti-discriminatory policies, we need to complement women quota with other gender friendly policies – and I’ll end with an anecdote to illustrate this final point: My wife Jo Rin and I were both delegates at the 2014 DAP National Convention, where Secretary General Saudara Lim Guan Eng announced the 30% women quota. We do not have babysitter at home, so we had to bring our 9-month old son to the convention. Because children were not allowed to go into the main hall, the organiser allowed us to use the side dining hall where my wife and I took turn to take care of baby Shaun. The volunteers were very kind to bring us food and even offered to babysit for us. This was a good gesture, but I think more can be done – perhaps proper babysitting facilities for children or even a children-friendly convention. After all, family mattered greatly in politics, everyone in the family: male, female, old and young.