ON Friday, 5 March 2021, I had the honour and privilege of moderating The Vibe’s first in a series of ‘Vibeinars’, ahead of International Women’s Day today. We had a strong panel: Permatang Pauh MP Nurul Izzah Anwar, Senator Datuk Ras Adiba Mohd Radzi, Refuge for Refugees founder and executive director Heidy Quah, and Human Resources Development Fund chief operations officer Datuk Ariff Farhan Doss.
The 90-minute web discussion, titled “Are Malaysian Women Truly Empowered?”, garnered more than 19,500 viewers via various social media channels.
In 2021, I note that we in Malaysia are still having these conversations about gender inequality, suggesting that the conversation, started so many decades ago, still has some ways to go to see full realisation in our country’s lifetime. Strides have been made in the areas of education and leadership in both the private sector and government, but of course, there is always room (and a large space it is) for improvement.
The theme for this year’s International Women's Day is “Choose To Challenge”. While women legislators, NGO groups and activists lobby for change at a legislative level, I would like to look at how we, the individual, can affect change - just by challenging how we all interact with each other on a personal level, at any given moment, and not only when the focus is laser trained on us, or another Women’s Day happens to roll around.
True equality lies in respect, empathy and understanding. An individual’s very early socialisation can determine how developed these traits are within and how they are expressed in the wider world.
So begin at home. Couples raising children should model respectful behaviour, empathy and patience in their family dynamic. Single parenthood has its own sets of challenges, so being mindful of our own mental and emotional baggage when raising the next generation is crucial, so as not to instil biases against the opposite sex that inevitably have a toxic ripple effect in society.
Think about how we raise and treat our daughters, to instil in them a strong sense of self, so they can identify and are empowered to call out bad behaviour, misogyny, unfair practices and the other myriad injustices women face in daily life, without seeing themselves as helpless or as a ‘victim’.
Our sons, too, must learn empathy, kindness and respect, not just for their own sisters, but for all the women they will come across in their lives for society to shift in a positive direction.
There have been times when I have observed male politicians saying the most appallingly chauvinistic things and addressing their female peers with an open contempt of their gender, that I wonder about how these men must have been raised, what kind of parenting he endured to be truly lacking in finesse and basic decency.
In another era perhaps, this toxic masculinity was a sign of strength, a way to establish and continue to dominate women and to mortify us into a shamed silence.
Another sphere where misogyny abounds is the internet. There have been so many instances where we have observed the disheartening and chauvinistic exchange some of our fellow Malaysians engage in, in the idea that ‘freedom of speech’ allows for a complete disregard for basic respect for the other.
The good thing about it being 2021 is that many of us, men and women alike, are ‘woke’ enough to call it out. This didn’t happen overnight. There were parents even in 1960s Malaysia who were quietly raising feminists of both genders. There are four daughters and one son in my family - and none of us would be shrinking violets in the face of any kind of discrimination, especially of the gender variety.
Choose to challenge yourself, if you feel inclined to make an off-colour remark about women, minorities, and the differently-abled - because a joke is a joke, what! - to elevate your thoughts, words and actions. Because really, in 2021, we can be better than this.
Let us be kind and respectful towards one another, lifting each other up. Only then can we affect change, bridge this gender gap, and have not just a nation of decent citizens, but true equality among the sexes.
May we all have an empowered International Women’s Day. – The Vibes, March 8, 2021
Shazmin Shamsuddin is the Culture & Lifestyle editor for The Vibes
