Malaysia's ministers -- where are the women

I wrote an article about how there is one extra woman in Malaysia’s new parliament.

Actually, it’s not even that good.

The numbers did not change at all.

My initial article did get some scrutiny regarding the make-up of Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) women parliamentarians.

In it, I said:

Five of the nine women elected for PR were from its component party Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR). Two were from Parti SeIslam Malaysia (PAS), including Siti Mariam Mahmud in Kota Raja. It is believed that, despite coming from PAS, Siti Mariam won her seat in 2008 due to support from Chinese and Indian voters. The other two women elected for PR were from the Democratic Action Party (DAP).

A reader quickly pointed out that although nine women were indeed elected from PR, the make-up was a little different from what I had said. Instead, four were from DAP, three from PKR, and two from PAS.

The number of nine women from the opposition has stayed correct throughout other analyses, but the number of women from BN has changed considerably.

My initial analysis, published on May 6, had the number of women elected for BN at 15.

On May 13, the Malay Mail reported that 11 women had been elected to the federal parliament for BN.

On that same day, DAP politicians Teresa Kok, Lim Lip Eng and Ong Kian Ming released a statement that said 13 women had been elected for BN.

Is anyone else noticing a huge discrepancy here?

Today, a former colleague published a piece at the Malaysian Insider (MI) using similar numbers to the politicians’ statement.

I contacted asking her where she had gotten her numbers, and she acknowledged that she had seen the three different figures provided but decided to go with those on the statement.

So I started to look at my data again. The Malaysian non-governmental organization Empower had set up a website to help monitor women’s participation in the 13th general election.

In examining the gender make-up of the new parliament, I had relied on data from that website to list the women candidates standing, and then as the results came in keep track of which of them had won seats.

Table 1: Elected PR women parliamentarians.

STATE PARLIAMENT CODE PARLIAMENT NAME PARTY NAME OF CANDIDATE
KELANTAN P023 RANTAU PANJANG PAS SITI ZAILAH MOHD YUSOFF
PULAU PINANG P046 BATU KAWAN DAP KASTHURIRAANI A/P PATTO
PAHANG P083 KUANTAN PKR FUZIAH SALLEH
SELANGOR P099 AMPANG PKR ZURAIDA KAMARUDDIN
SELANGOR P111 KOTA RAJA PAS SITI MARIAM MAHMUD
WP KUALA LUMPUR P121 LEMBAH PANTAI PKR NURUL IZZAH ANWAR
WP KUALA LUMPUR P122 SEPUTAH DAP TERESA KOK
JOHOR P163 KULAI DAP TEO NIE CHING
SARAWAK P211 LANANG DAP ALICE LAU KIONG YIENG

According to the information I had in my spreadsheet, the numbers I had were correct. There was no issue with the number of women politicians elected for PR, so I started to look at the politicians elected for BN.

And I started to look not only at my data, but also the data of others on whom I had relied.

Therein, I found a problem. In my data, and that of Empower’s, I had one BN candidate listed as a female when he was in fact a man.

Table 2: Elected BN women parliamentarians.

STATE PARLIAMENT CODE PARLIAMENT NAME PARTY NAME OF CANDIDATE
SELANGOR P093 SUNGAI BESAR UMNO NORIAH KASNON
MALACCA P134 MASJID TANAH UMNO MAS ERMIEYATI SAMUDIN
JOHOR P147 PARIT SULONG UMNO NORAINI AHMAD
JOHOR P155 TENGGARA UMNO HALIMAH MOHD SADIQUE
JOHOR P157 PENGERANG UMNO AZALINA OTHMAN
JOHOR P159 PASIR GUDANG UMNO NORMALA ABDUL SAMAD
SABAH P175 PAPAR UMNO ROSNAH ABDUL SHIRLIN
SABAH P177 BEAUFORT UMNO AZIZAH MOHD DUN
SABAH P185 BATU SAPI PBS LISA TSEN THAU LIN
SABAH P190 TAWAU PBS MARY YAP KAIN CHING
SARAWAK P197 KOTA SAMARAHAN PBB RUBIAH WANG
SARAWAK P200 BATANG SADONG PBB NANCY SHUKRI
SARAWAK P201 BATANG LUPAR PBB ROHANI ABDUL KARIM
SARAWAK P206 TANJONG MANIS PBB NORAH ABDUL RAHIM

My former colleague who had written the MI piece also clued in very quickly. I had sent her my data, in the hope of getting to the bottom of these different numbers.

I had made a mistake in my initial analysis. I cannot blame Empower for this error, as a quick Google search on the concerned candidate would have cleared this up.

The work that not just Empower, but many women’s organizations in Malaysia, have done to promote women’s political participation in Malaysia is truly remarkable. Empower has done a great job in acting as a watchdog on women’s role in the 13th general election.

But at the same time, I have to wonder: how was this not a big deal earlier? How did no other journalist or researcher think to hold people who had offered these numbers earlier to account?

Why is the number of women elected to parliament something that only individuals with a particular niche should care about?

Shouldn’t we all be concerned that, despite the lip service both sides of the political divide paid to women’s empowerment in the run-up to this election, nothing really changed?

That in fact, when it comes to women’s political participation in Malaysia, what we are seeing is the same pattern being repeated over and over?

I wrote this piece because to put an end to the incorrect figures now circulating on Malaysian women parliamentarians, and I had to acknowledge my role in allowing that to happen.

However, I worry that the lack of concern and lack of willingness to do further research on these numbers is perhaps indicative of how ingrained our belief in women’s issues as a cross between a non-issue and a niche is.