Malaysian women deserve better than 152nd place in the world

We, the undersigned, call upon government and opposition parties at both federal and state government levels to introduce party-list seats with a gender quota.

As the Asean chair, we embarrassingly rank ninth in women’s parliamentary representation in the entire Southeast Asia region.

Malaysia should consider emulating Thailand and Taiwan, where their parliaments have closed-list proportional representation (PR) seats with gender quotas in parallel with first-past-the-post (FPTP) seats. This can guarantee a minimum percentage of women’s representation.

Introducing such a hybrid system, called mixed-member majoritarian, at the federal level requires an amendment to the Federal Constitution, hence a cross-party consensus.

At the state level, the existing appointed seats allowed in Sabah (six), Pahang (five) and Terengganu (four) can be easily converted to closed-list PR-like ‘women-only additional seats’ allocated to parties based on their vote shares in the normal FPTP elections.

States can also create ‘top-up women-only additional seats’ that guarantee minimum 30% women’s representation by adding just enough women appointed assembly members to close the gap from 30%.

Initiated by the Penang Women’s Development Corporation (PWDC), this innovation, originated in Penang, was tabled in a white paper to the state legislature in November 2022, but unfortunately its implementation was not pursued.

On 12 August 2025, the Selangor executive council member for women’s development, Anfaal Shaari, proposed for Selangor to implement such seats, which may make Selangor the first Malaysian state to attain the international 30% benchmark.

Last week, 15 September saw the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted at the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women, which called for a minimum 30% women’s representation in all decision-making bodies, including legislatures.

After 30 years, taking into account non-elected speakers, deputy speakers and appointed members alongside elected members, only 30 (13.4%) out of 223 members of the House of Representatives and 72 (11.6%) out of 623 state assembly members have been women.

This puts Malaysia at a pathetic 152nd spot out of the 188 countries in women’s parliamentary representation as per Inter-Parliamentary Union monitoring as of 2 July 2025. Among active IPU member countries in Southeast Asia, Malaysia performs better than Brunei (158th) only.

Contrary to the perception that Malaysia lacks women’s talents in politics, we strongly believe that Malaysia lacks even more male retirees. In Malaysia, on average, women are better educated than men. Even in rural areas, women’s talents would emerge if given the opportunities to take up leadership responsibilities.

Women’s representation can only go up if some male incumbents are either replaced by female successors within a party or by female challengers from a rival party.

However, due to two of its features, our FPTP electoral system often stands in the way of internal replacement of male incumbents by women candidates.

First, as only one candidate is elected from each constituency, women are often overlooked.

Second, as FPTP seats are won on personal following besides the party’s logo, popular male incumbents can threaten sabotage to resist efforts by the party leadership to vacate their seats for women candidates.

These two features of FPTP require candidates to match the desired characteristics of their constituencies, which could be ethnicity or subethnicity, religion, language, home state, mannerisms, visibility to issues championed, and gender.

For this reason, Malaysia may have an oversupply of women’s talents from some urban areas but much fewer suitable constituencies for them to stand. Also, strong male incumbents may resist women quotas due to the fear that women candidates may replace them rather than weaker male incumbents.

We call upon all political parties to nominate a minimum of 30% women candidates in the next general election and state elections.

We also urge the “Madani” (trustworthy) government to enact a political financing act with public funding for political parties that would be partially tied to the number of their women parliamentarians.

Beyond this, we urge all political parties to study and support the creation of closed-list PR seats besides the existing FPTP seats in the House of Representatives and closed-list-like women-only or top-up women-only additional seats at the state level.

In closed-list PR, every constituency elects multiple candidates, and every party can present multiple candidates in a list with a fixed sequence of candidates. Voters choose between party lists. Seats are allocated to parties based on their vote share and filled by candidates based on their sequence on the list.

Gender quotas can be easily imposed in closed-list PR seats by dictating that specified positions on the list are reserved for women. For example, if the intended women’s quota is 50%, then the first, third, fifth…positions can be reserved for women. Women candidates do not need to worry about a  candidate-constituency match. They just need to help their parties to get more closed-list PR votes so that more women candidates from their parties can be elected. In closed-list PR, strong male incumbents’ fear of being arbitrarily replaced by new women candidates can also be alleviated.

As Malaysia greets the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Platform with the glaring failure to meet the 30% target, we call upon:

• Azalina Othman Said, the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department responsible for law and institutional Reform
• Nancy Shukri, the Minister of Women, Family and Community Development
• Yeo Bee Yin, the chairperson of the parliamentary Special Select Committee on Women, Children and Community Development

to initiate federal-level conversations on closed-list PR seats and gender quotas.

We call upon:

• Amirudin Shari, the Chief Minister of Selangor, to back the introduction of top-up women-only additional seats in Selangor
• Chow Kon Yeow, the Chief Minister of Penang, to restart the top-up women-only additional seats project in Penang

We also call upon:

• Hajiji Noor, the Chief Minister of Sabah and chairman of Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS)
• Shafie Apdal, the president of Warisan
• Bung Moktar Radin, the chairman of Sabah Barisan Nasional
• Ewon Benedick, the chairman of Sabah Pakatan Harapan

to promise in their manifestos the conversion of Sabah’s six appointed seats to women-only additional seats.

We call upon:

• Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar, the Chief Minister of Terengganu, to study the conversion of Terengganu’s four appointed seats to women-only additional seats
• Wan Rosdy Wan Ismail, the Chief Minister of Pahang, to study the conversion of Pahang’s five appointed seats to women-only additional seats

This joint statement is initiated by Project Stability and Accountability for Malaysia (Projek Sama) and endorsed by the following organisations and individuals in alphabetical order:

As of 14 September 2025 @ 1230

Civil society organisations

1. Project Stability and Accountability for Malaysia (Projek Sama)
2. All Women’s Action Society (Awam)
3. Alumni Sidang Wanita Pulau Pinang (Aswip)
4. Bait Al Amanah (BAA)
5. Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ)
6. Centre for Research on Women and Gender (Kanita), USM
7. Engage
8. Lawyer Kamek
9. Penang Women’s Development Corporation, PWDC
10. Perkumpulan Perempuan Sabah (PPS)
11. Persatuan Kepimpinan Wanita Rahmah Kelantan (Mawar)
12. Persatuan Memangkin Daya Masyarakat (Rose)
13. Persatuan Sahabat Wanita Selangor (PSWS)
14. Pertubuhan Penduduk Berasal Sabah (PPBS)
15. ER (Pergerakan Wanita. Empowerment and Revolution)
16. Sabah Women’s Action Resource Group (Sawo)
17. SIS Forum (Malaysia) (SIS)
18. Tenaganita
19. University of Malaya Association of New Youth (Umany)
20. Vokal Sejiwa (VS)
21. WOAS4SABAH
22. Women Empowerment Initiative – WE Initiative (Pertubuhan Wanita Berdaya)
23. Women’s Centre for Change, Penang (WCC)

Political parties

1. Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (Muda)
2. Parti Bumi Kenyalang, Sabah
3. Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) women’s wing
4. Parti Solidariti Tanah Airku (Star)
5. Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM)

Elected representatives

1. Doris Sophia Brodie (MP for Sri Aman from GPS-PRS)
2. Dr Hafidzah Binti Haji Mustakim (Kelantan assembly member for Kota Lama from Pas)
3. Lee Boon Heng (Penang assembly member for Kebun Bunga from PKR)
4. Flovia Ng (Sabah Assistant Minister for Community Development and People’s Wellbeing; assembly member for Tulid)
5. Rodziah Ismail (MP for Ampang from PKR)
6. Saifuddin Abdullah (MP for Indera Mahkota from Bersatu)
7. Wasanthee Sinnasamy (Perak assembly member for Hutan Melintang from PKR)
8. Wong Chen (MP for Subang from PKR)

Other individuals

1. Abinaya Mohan, researcher
2. Associate Prof Nor Hafizah Selamat, researcher
3. Bawani Kaniapan, former state assembly candidate, PSM; lawyer
4. Beverley Natalie Koh, vice-president, Star, chair, WOAS4Sabah
5. Candy Chiew, officer
6. Chan Quin Er, central committee member, MCA; lawyer
7. Chong Eng, former Penang executive council member; TWOAS for Penang
8. Constantine Anthony, businessperson
9. Rohana Weiler, board member, Penang Women’s Development Corporation (PWDC); TWOAS for Penang)
10. Ong Bee Leng, CEO, PWDC; TWOAS for Penang
11. Davylandon Rubbin, engineer
12. Dr Alfonso Min, researcher
13. Dr Cecilia Ng, former visiting professor, USM; TWOAS for Penang
14. Dr Intan Hashimah Mohd Hashim, researcher
15. Dr Lai Wan Teng, researcher
16. Faezrah Rizalman, state chief, Sabah Muda
17. Fazar Arif, founder, POW.ER
18. Joshua Jeremiah Sandrah, businessperson
19. Justine Majip, educationist
20. Karen Lai, activist; TWOAS for Penang
21. Masjaliza Hamzah, activist
22. Ooi Hooi Kiang, businessperson
23. Peter Koh, pensioner
24. Prof Noraida Endut, researcher
25. Rusni Tajari, senior manager of strategy and policy, WBS
26. Shabudin Mohd Dun, businessperson
27. Siti Harinah Mohd Dun, assistant secretary, PPS; retired teacher
28. Suguna Papachan, teacher
29. Yeong Pey Jung, researcher, Penang Institute; TWOAS for Penang
30. Yuen Chew Woon, retiree

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