Girls and women are excelling in secondary and tertiary education; yet formal women’s participation in public life and major decision-making remains lower. Why is that?
This is a piece I wrote for IPS:
It is a paradox, all right. Women make up more than half of those who take part in protests and other activities organised by her political party on issues affecting low-income workers, says Rani Rasiah of the Socialist Party of Malaysia.
But when it comes to holding official positions at the party’s local branches, more than half of the officials happen to be men, she observes.
“Maybe the womenfolk feel they have responsibilities at home and are unable to attend regular party meetings and the demands that come with them,” reasons the party’s deputy secretary general.
”There is also a certain degree of control at home about women going out at night or leaving the household to attend regular meetings,” she continues. ”Maybe the women themselves lack self esteem and self-confidence to play a leadership role.”
Full article in IPS here.
Girls like a princess (this is a praise, OK)
Women like a mom (this is a praise, OK)
Boys like a naughty baby (this is my observation)
Men like a king (this is myself)
So, when comes to grabbing top posts or key positions, of course male has the advantage.
Please respect women and girls. Stop degrading them using any direct or indirect insinuation like “bocor”, “leak”, etc….
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Has religion anything to do with it. Look, wearing Burga as a simple example, is still a preferred dress for the men in many Middle East countries for their woman folks. The women are still living under the sufferance of, egoistic and hollow headed male specimens…until that sort of mentality changed, there is little hope the women will become prominent figures in public life.
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“Why is that?”
Guys. They’re their own worst enemy. Or at least they’re my worst enemy. I don’t feel terribly badly adjusted as a male animal but I completely fail to understand why some men would want to make any rule that reduced the number of females in their environment. I would rather – if someone has to go – that it would be other guys. I just don’t want to see them or be near them. I’m completely fed up with sharing an office toilet with them. I don’t understand why some men conspire to reduce the number of happy, healthy, confident women in their environment. Are they gay? I have occasionally enjoyed the brief moment of male-bonding myself in the past, but surely it’s possible to get too much of a good thing? Maybe some of us have different thresholds.
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Sorry, I have to retract my last sentence. In Aussie land, we have the first lady Prime Minister!!! How great is that?
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In the future, a man in Malaysia is likely to be less qualified than a woman. However, he could marry 4 female graduates to support him.
Malaysia Boleh!
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Those type of “men” are certainly not qualified to be the father of my children.
Bad genes.
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Anil,
I have to be honest, I like my women pretty and tall and very sexy. I like my women to be good cooks and good at looking after kids.
So far all my secretaries have been very good looking and they must wear short skirts to work.
Am I gender biased. I think not. I’m just a happy bloke!
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Did you hear about the ‘prophecy’ that Malaysia in time will ‘export’ maids (may be degree holders) to overseas? We are learning from the Philipines.
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This is a gruesome act against woman that is practiced in modern times in the name of religion .
You can read about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stoning_of_Soraya_M. …
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Mr. Anil,
From the standpoint of a female, your asking “yet formal women’s participation in public life and major decision-making remains lower. Why is that?” is nothing but patronising.
Why all the fixation on Gender?
As a working adult female even I do not judge a person by her or his gender, instead I judge one by personality / ability / willingness to strive for the best.
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“is nothing but patronising”
No it isn’t, unless you’re not very good at counting. Anil suspects (being a reasonable and generous soul) that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with women, and expects they are just as competent as men to hold positions in the workforce. He observes (or repeats a woman’s observation, so he is only second-hand matronising at worst) that there is a bias in the numbers of the two main genders in the workforce and quite intelligently wonders what is the cause.
If women are as well-equipped for certain kinds of work as men are (we’re not discussing heavyweight boxing or bean-flipping here) and it was purely chance that decided whether a man or a woman filled a vacancy, then we’d expect to see in a set of workers a ratio similar to that of the general population, but with slightly more women than men, because men die earlier.
It could quite easily be ability, but that’s the original premise. If we propose that’s the cause, then we’d have to check our assumption about the relative ability of women. There is of course the issue of childbirth, but even if we were to calculate 12 months for each of 3 children each on average for women, and allow that there’s no long-lasting debility from childbirth, we’d still expect women to comprise – in a population where people work for 45 years on average – no less than 42:45 of workers.
A possible worst case scenario is that women spend 20 of their 45 employable years as bonded domestic engineers, in which case – although it may be harder to argue against some form of consequent debility – we would expect to see a ratio of 25:45. Many walks of public life in Malaysia have women:men ratios nowhere near that, so the curious numerate person wonders why.
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It _is_ patronising.
Who cares how many men or how many women are on the top?
What I am banking on is the quality and not quantity or else we will have the quota system again.
Is that what you want? A quota system whereby a certain percentage of top post is reserved for a certain group of people, whether or not they are qualified.
Is that what you really want, Sean?
And coming from the males (I am assuming “Sean” is a male) it is patronising because all my life I never let my gender tie me down, nor the gender bias hold by the others.
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It is absolutely not patronising – for one because he is repeating a woman’s observation, and for the other because it is an observation that reality does not reflect reaonsable expectation.
It doesn’t require ‘care’, all it requires is a curious mind and the abilities to count and to express one’s self when one’s expectations are not met.
If ‘want’ enters the discussion at all, I have revealed my desires in my first comment. Being a generous sort who imagines that desires such as mine might be equalled in magnitude but opposed in sign in a woman’s mind, I would expect the net effect to be roughly equal representation in the work place. With that in mind, it’s clearly not wants such as mine that could be blamed for the discrepancy.
What I assume Anil wants, since he quotes the original source of the observation, is – I imagine – an explanation. If – as you appear to want – the explanation has something to do with ability, then I should very much like to hear a correlation between gender and ability explained, because I know of no ability (besides for heavyweight boxing and sports requiring a penis for participation) that would convince me that males possess such an innate advantage.
Rather than impugning my motives, perhaps you could turn your ability to the question at hand. How do /you/ explain the correlation between maleness and prevalence in the workplace?
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Expectation? In term of quantity? In term of quota?
If that is the expectation please do not count me in.
I will not accept a quota system set up for the female kind (yes, my kind) because no quota system benefits the society.
Not even for the females.
And I do not owe you nor anybody else to explain your male perspective of “domination of maleness”. You male do not understand the female, no matter how we female explain it to you you still can not understand.
That is why we female are superior in brain power while you males are better at temper tantrums display.
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You’re still accusing me of something I have not implied. Are you able to understand ‘reasonable expectation’ and counting? If you flipped a coin a hundred times would you expect it to land on one side 50 times and 50 times on the other, or close to 50? If it landed 95 times on one side and only 5 on the other, wouldn’t you wonder why? Only an idiot would suggest a quota for which side a coin should land on. Another kind of idiot would accept a one-sided coin without question.
I don’t understand the second half of your comment at all – that appears to be a pure rant about something I can’t find in any other comment at all. Your closing sentence is a masterpiece of irony, given the rest of your comment.
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As I said before, you males do not and can never comprehend what we mean.
I give up, and in fact, I gave up a long time ago trying to make you males understand our (female) perspective.
There are of course the so-called “females” who are asking for quotas. Those are “running dogs” of the woman kind.
They are too lazy to fight for equality, instead they took the short cut and ask for quotas.
Equality does not involve quantity, and you keep repeating the “counting” phase while not reading what I wrote, Sean.
Counting means what? Count numbers, ie, quantity.
That is wrong.
Even if you get 30% of whatever seats reserved for the female, if you can’t get enough qualified females to “man” the seat, what would you do?
Get unqualified females to be benchwarmers, of course.
This is your typical male “solution”, to fill up the posts and then tell yourself “I got the job done”.
But what is the end result? A body with 30% of the seats filled up by unqualified females.
Let me ask you again: Is that what you want, Sean?
Why can’t you go the quality route instead?
Why can’t we insist on quality instead of “counting”?
You keep repeating that Mr. Anil repeated the “observation of a female”, observation of what kind of female? Lazy, short-sighted, taking-the-short-cut kind of female.
Is that what you and Mr. Anil do, repeating the “viewpoint of a female”, a viewpoint of a female who is too lazy to make herself a much better person.
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You’re still raving on about quotas and having some special thought processes that means you cannot make yourself understood.
Do you understand the point I made about flipping the coin? If the coin is landing unmistakeably on one side as opposed to the other, when our understanding of coins would cause us to expect a roughly equal number of ‘heads’ and ‘tails’, then to use your language, the coin we are observing certainly has some ‘quality’ which is at variance with what we would expect.
If a coin lands 90% heads and 10% tails, a fool might propose that we call 45% of heads ‘tails’ to make things ‘fair’. That would be the quota solution, as you are so fond of bringing up. A more reasonable person might enquire why the coin is behaving oddly. I am that reasonable person, as is Anil, and so is the person Anil is quoting. None of us are advocating quotas, as you so frequently accuse us. One of the contributors to the linked article mentions ‘allocations’, and I recall the same person has explicitly proposed quotas in the past. I disagree entirely with quotas.
You are carefully avoiding my question to you which is “what is the ‘quality’ you refer to so often which is the explanation for the variance we observe between expected and actual male-female participation?” The author of the original piece offers her explanation. I have offered some potential explanations / conjecture which don’t fully explain the phenomenon. Now it’s your turn.
You can’t just keep spouting ‘quality’ – the word is meaningless without qualification. What ‘quality’ of being female that is not a quality of (or is different in magnitude in) men are you referring to that explains the discrepancy?
You are attempting intellectual dishonesty on two grounds: you are accusing us of seeking quotas – after repeated dismissal of the idea – and you are parroting a mantra (“it’s ‘quality’!”) invoked to distract people from the reasonable observation that reality is at odds with their expectations.
A reasonable person expects that they have similar ‘quality’ to any other. Why then are they not similarly represented in a particular community (business, politics etc)? A person possessing the ‘quality’ of reason would attempt to suggest a coherent explanation for the observed phenomenon.
We know the answer is a ‘quality’ of some kind! It’s up to you to suggest which ‘quality’ it is that men have in a sufficiently greater magnitude than women to explain the discrepancy phenomenon.
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Looks like you just can’t get out of off your “quantitative prison”.
Your coin analogy is just that, stastistic, aka, quantity of A versus of quantity of B.
I give up.
Until the time you understand what “Quality” is all about, talking about quantity is not going to bear any result.
Since you like analogy, take Singapore and Malaysia.
One stresses on Quality the other stresses on Quantity.
Guess which is which?
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She had been at the helm of Opposition Leader before and my wish is that she’ll become the 1st Lady Prime Minister of Malaysia! She’ll have great guidiance from her coalition if she’s unable to decide instinctly.
Pakatan towards Putrajaya if Anwar is unavialable due to circumstances.
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“Girls and women are excelling in secondary and tertiary education; yet formal women’s participation in public life and major decision-making remains lower. Why is that?”
What is your objective, Mr. Anil?
Why is the first half of your assertion conflict with your second half, Mr. Anil?
The first half says that we women are better and then you turn around and say that we females are lesser in number in the “higher heirarchy”.
Is number all you are after, Mr. Anil?
Is that all you can understand? Number of women vs number of men?
Why don’t you look at things qualititavely?
1 excellent leader has the effect of more than 100 second-rated “leaders” combined.
The same apply in all the fields.
I rather have one very qualified female leader than to have 100 not-so-qualified female leaders.
But of course you guys (men) always look at the numbers and exclaim that “Oh no, look, there are so _few_ women in charge”.
We are in charge, Mr. Anil.
We are in charge in the home, in the backstage, exerting our influences through you males.
All the mothers, the wives, the daughters of men are women and we do get what we want through you guys.
You work for us.
Even Barrack Obama is no exception. He works for his wife, and daughters.
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What makes you think only a few females are qualified to be leaders and the other females are unqualified or “second-rated” as you put it?
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It is not what I think.
It is the reality that reflects everything.
What we have in Malaysia is the lack of quality people – male and female – that can lead us out of the dolldrum.
No matter which sides (PR or BN / Male or Female) all we have are tin kosongs, from both sides.
Every day they spout hot air. Not a single good and solid plan to help the nation nor the people.
All hot air.
That is happening not only to the Male politicians but also the Female.
When I saw the Female politicians from both BN and PR grouped together demanding that 30% of whatever should be reserved for the Female, I know that this country has no future.
What those females want is to have a piece of the pie without having to work for it.
They are same minded as those who insist that NEP must continued ad nauseum, that without the whatever percentage benefits a certain group of people would starve to death.
Same tired and bogus reasonings.
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I think perhaps we can move on. If I can infer correctly, Pearl suggests lower female participation in some fields is due to women being more likely to be ‘second-rate’, ‘lazy’, ‘short-sighted’, ‘taking short-cuts’ and simply less likely to be the ‘better person’.
I have to confess to having no statistics beyond personal experience myself. Since Pearl has (I assume) equally credible experience and could possibly be speaking for a community of which she is a member and we are not, I think we have to accept her explanation as the best one so far – at least on your website!
I’m glad we were able to reach some sort of conclusion, even if I have my reservations. Is a reservation a kind of quota for opinions?
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“Is a reservation a kind of quota?”
Do not look too far and you can see the result.
Three letters come to mind: N-E-P.
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