Archive for category women

Nurulhidayah has done a great disservice to women empowerment when Malaysians should be looking for the next glass ceiling to be broken in having a woman Prime Minister

(Versi BM)

UMNO President Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s daughter, Nurulhidaya Hamidi, has done a great disservice to women empowerment when she said that women are not born to be leaders.

We already have had a woman Deputy Prime Minister and it should not be too tall an order to have a woman Prime Minister in Malaysia. Read the rest of this entry »

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Ahmad Faizal Azumu should be removed as Youth and Sports Minister for his outrageous question to national diver Pendelela Rinong

(Versi BM)

Ahmad Faizal Azumu should be removed as Youth and Sports Minister for his outrageous question to national diver Pandelela Rinong,

Pendelela has answered Ahmad Faizal very well – she said she had shared her experience of sexual harassment involving her former coach in order to offer support and embolden other victims to speak up.

She said she wanted to encourage future victims to “be brave when I wasn’t”. Read the rest of this entry »

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#kerajaangagal33 – Why Education Minister Radzi Jidin unable to provide leadership to ensure schools a safe place instead of allowing the issues of period spot checks and complaints about lewd jokes by teachers in class to roil the country for nearly three weeks?

(Tatal ke bawah untuk kenyataan versi BM)

Yesterday, Malaysia diving queen and two-time Olympic medallist Pandelela Rinong endorsed 17-year-old Ain Husniza Saiful Nizam’s call to make schools a safer place, and offered encouragement for the Form 5 student to keep on speaking up.

She said it was just like when she was called DIVA when she was trying to #makesportasaferplace. Read the rest of this entry »

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#kerajaangagal27 – Will the Speaker, Azhar Harun, henceforth strike out all lewd jokes in Parliament to honour Ain Husniza for her courage and leadership in speaking up against lewd jokes in class?

(Tatal ke bawah untuk kenyataan versi BM)

Will the Speaker of Parliament, Azhar Harun, henceforth strike out all lewd jokes in Parliament to honour Ain Husnuiza Saiful Nizam for her courage and leadership in speaking up against lewd jokes in class?

This is because Parliament has seen its fair share of offensive utterings against female MPs.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Saiful Nizam should be an example for all Malaysians – firm on what is right and wrong but forgiving when mistakes are admitted

(Tatal ke bawah untuk kenyataan versi BM)

Saiful Nizam Ab Wahad should be example for all Malaysians – firm on what is right and wrong but forgiving when mistakes are admitted,

Saiful is the father 17-year-old Ain Husniza Saiful Nizam who had exposed her male teacher for allegedly making lewd jokes in class, and later, she received an audio recording of one of her male schoolmates threatening to rape her, which was originally sent to a separate group chat.

The Form 5 student who made a rape threat against her has apologised for his remarks. Read the rest of this entry »

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It was kakistocracy in Malaysia at its worst – with three examples yesterday especially assigning observers to tellers during parliamentary division voting which is a declaration that Members of Parliament in Malaysia cannot be trusted to carry out simple tasks.

(Tatal ke bawah untuk kenyataan versi BM)

It was kakistocracy in Malaysia at its worst – with three examples yesterday especially assigning observers to tellers during parliamentary division voting which is a declaration that Members of Parliament in Malaysia cannot be trusted to carry out simple tasks.

This assignment must be the first of its kind in Commonwealth Parliaments but it sends out the wrong messages, firstly, that MPs cannot be depended upon to carry out simple tasks; and secondly, which is more serious, that MPs cannot be trusted at all! Read the rest of this entry »

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The 42 DAP MPs will vote in support of a constitutional amendment to provide for equal rights for Malaysian women to confer citizenship on children born overseas

Kesemua 42 orang Ahli Parlimen DAP akan menyokong RUU Pindaan Perlembagaan bagi memberikan hak sama rata kepada wanita berbangsa Malaysia untuk menurunkan kerakyatan mereka kepada anak yang lahir di luar negara

Kesemua 42 orang Ahli Parlimen DAP akan menyokong satu Rang Undang-undang Pindaan Perlembagaan untuk memberikan hak sama rata kepada wanita yang berbangsa Malaysia untuk menurunkan kerakyatannya kepada anak kelahiran mereka yang lahir di luar negara.

Perkara 14 Perlembagaan Persekutuan membenarkan bapa berkerakyatan Malaysia untuk menurunkan kerakyatan mereka kepada anak mereka yang lahir di luar negara dengan kelulusan diberikan dalam tempoh beberapa bulan selepas permohonan.

Tetapi wanita berbangsa Malaysia yang mengahwini suami berbangsa asing perlu memohon kerakyatan bagi anak mereka di bawah peruntukan berbeza — Perkara 15(2) Perlembagaan Persekutuan.

Sesetengah wanita ini telah menunggu lebih daripada dua tahun untuk mendapatkan kerakyatan bagi anak mereka, malah sesetengah permohonan mereka telah ditolak tanpa sebab.

Mereka yang memohon semula setelah ditolak buat kali pertama kebiasaannya ditolak sekali lagi tanpa diberikan sebarang sebab. Read the rest of this entry »

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Let 308 double anniversary foreshadow first change of Federal Government in Malaysia in 14GE as among other things, I believe there will be more women Ministers in the first Pakatan Harapan Cabinet

Today is a double anniversary for 8th March – International Women’s Day as well as the tenth anniversary of the urban political tsunami of the 12th General Election exactly 10 years ago.

Let the 308 double anniversary foreshadow the first change of Federal Government in Malaysia in the 14th General Election expected to be held in less than 70 days before mid-May, where Malaysia starts the journey on the world stage to become a normal democracy where voters can peacefully and democratically elect the Federal Government of their choice through the ballot box in a general election without any man-made chaos or catastrophe.

Let us enlarge the urban political tsunami ten years ago into a national political tsunami, encompassing rural political tsunami, where all Malaysians regardless of race, religion or region unite as Malaysians to re-set Malaysian nation-building direction and policies where all Malaysians can feel proud as Malaysians because the country becomes a show-case unity, harmony, justice, development and prosperity of a plural society to a troubled world instead of hurtling along the present trajectory towards a failed, rogue and kleptocratic state after six decades of nationhood. Read the rest of this entry »

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When would a Malaysian woman do Malaysia proud, in the way that Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati has done Indonesia proud in receiving the Best Minister Award at World Government Summit on Sunday?

When would a Malaysian woman do Malaysia proud, in the way that Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indfrawati has done Indonesia proud in receiving the Best Minister Award at the World Government Summit in Dubai on Sunday.

Sri Mulyani was credited with achieving “tangible results in reducing poverty, improving the standard of living, reducing public debt and boosting the transparency of public institutions” as Indonesia’s Finance Minister since 2016 under President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.

She was also recognised for her efforts to “fight corruption and increase transparency in government.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Annuar and the UMNO stooges are all wrong – DAP will not be the Pakatan Harapan party with the largest bloc of MPs from the 165 parliamentary seats in Peninsular Malaysia

When UMNO Supreme Council member and Deputy Agriculture and Agro-based Industries Deputy Minister Datuk Tajuddin Abdul Rahman made a false accusation against Tun Mahathir and tried to claim that Mahathir was “injected with DAP’s blood”, everyone including UMNO leaders must be wondering what blood Tajuddin had been injected with because there is not a more foul-mouthed political leader today than Tajuddin who seemed to have no trace of “adab orang Melayu” at all.

Would UMNO Information Chief, Tan Sri Annuar Musa agree with Tajuddin’s analogy of “blood injection” for the improper conduct of UMNO leaders to the extent that they have become the very personifaction not only of kleptocracy but “global kleptocracy”?

Has Annuar been affected by “injected blood” for his ongoing campaign to demonise me and Mahathir, especially in his speech yesterday alleging that the “formidable” and “invincible” politician had been “tamed” by me and that I deserved the title of “political dictator”?

As there is neither logic nor coherence in Annuar’s speech, it may be a good idea for Annuar to go for a blood test! Read the rest of this entry »

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Child marriage is another form of modern day slavery

Syerleena Abdul Rashid
April 7, 2016

Pasir Putih MP Nik Mazian Nik Mohamad made a mockery of our institution today, by opposing the ban of child marriages by justifying that “If we restrict them from getting married, (their) lust will remain, and they will be exposed to premarital casual sex”. Not only is this justification sexist, it is a huge blow to social justice and human rights in our country.

Child marriage is catastrophic. Common sense dictates that it is immoral and the response given by Nik Mazian, indicate the distressing deterioration of reason and logic in our present day society. According to UNICEF, approximately over ‘700 million women alive today were married as children’ and similar reports by the UN, estimate that between 2011 and 2020, over 140 million children – mostly, girls, will become child brides.

Although in Malaysia, the legal minimum age for marriage under civil law for both genders is 18, girls can marry at 16 under Islamic law – and sometimes even younger with the consent of the Syariah court. In 2014, the Malaysian Syariah Judiciary Department received roughly 600 marriage applications for couples below the age of consent and approximately 446 of these applications have been approved by the department. Read the rest of this entry »

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Happy International Women’s Day!

By Martin Jalleh

1 Comment

Is there ever a positive side to beauty pageants?

Syerleena Abdul Rashid
The Malaysian Insider
22 January 2016

On a personal level, I have to admit, beauty pageants make me queasy because it sends out a pretty clear message that only beautiful women succeed in life.

Beauty pageants and other similar events where women are made to prance around all dolled up with fake smiles plastered on their faces have increasingly becoming more controversial.

The negative impacts it has will definitely resonate especially on young girls. Read the rest of this entry »

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Can Prime Minister and Cabinet end the greatest injustice in the Najib premiership – ensure Indira Gandhi’s re-union with her daughter within 48 hours after the Prime Minister, Cabinet, Parliament and Judiciary have failed her for seven years?

Tomorrow is the Cabinet’s weekly Wednesday meeting.

One of the issues the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak and the 36 Ministers in the Cabinet must wrestle with is what they could to end one of the greatest injustices in the Najib premiership of six year nine months – where a mother had been forcibly separated from her 11-month old baby daughter not for one or two years but for seven years!

The Prime Minister, the Cabinet, Parliament and the Judiciary have all failed Indira Gandhi and the Constitution, the laws, the courts and the system of governance have been manipulated to deny Indira her fundamental rights as a mother to see, hold and touch her daughter!

The same week that Najib became the sixth Prime Minister of Malaysia in April 2009, Indira found that her three children had without her knowledge or consent been unilaterally converted to Islam by her ex husband, who had converted to Islam a month earlier.

That started Indira’s long and still unending legal battle for control and custody of her three children. Read the rest of this entry »

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So you think sexist jokes are funny?

Syerleena Abdul Rashid
The Malaysian Insider
4 December 2015

Jokes are meant to make us laugh. Plain and simple, right?

By definition, a joke is made up of words within a particular and “well-defined narrative structure” designed to make people crack a smile and express some level of amusement.

Jokes can be simple or even complex. It can be a story, a one-liner, a pun, slapstick or utter nonsense. However, there are jokes that have the opposite effect; some jokes are tasteless, crude, offensive and lewd. These are the type of jokes that joke tellers ought to think twice before articulating. Read the rest of this entry »

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Purveyors of hate

– Sheela R
The Malaysian Insider
8 September 2015

Voices of hatred seem bent on gaining traction in our nation, with their exclusivist agenda. Sadly, history seems to have taught us little.

In the 1930s, the Nazis, obsessed with a vision of a racially pure society, employed a series of cunning strategies, to ensure the realisation of their goals. These included:

Reshaping intellectual and public perception through the banning of books, articles, magazines, newspapers, and public displays of burning literature that were deemed to be incompatible with Nazi ideals. Such literary materials were deemed to foster “liberal decay”. Read the rest of this entry »

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From a Shenzhen factory job to world’s richest self-made woman

by David Barboza
New York Times
July 30, 2015

How a Chinese Billionaire Built Her Fortune

Zhou Qunfei started out making watch lenses for $1 a day, but honed her hands-on knowledge into a world-class, multibillion-dollar operation at the vanguard of China’s push into high-end manufacturing.

Zhou Qunfei is the world’s richest self-made woman. Zhou, the founder of Lens Technology, owns a $27 million estate in Hong Kong. She jets off to Silicon Valley and Seoul to court executives at Apple and Samsung, her two biggest customers. She has played host to President Xi Jinping of China, when he visited her company’s headquarters.

But she seems most at home pacing the floor of her state-of-the-art factory, tinkering.

She’ll dip her hands into a tray of water, to determine whether the temperature is just right. She can explain the intricacies of heating glass in an ion potassium salt bath. When she passes a grinding machine, she is apt to ask technicians to step aside so she can take their place for a while.

Zhou knows the drill. For years, she labored in a factory, the best job she could get having grown up in an impoverished village in central China.

“She’ll sometimes sit down and work as an operator to see if there’s anything wrong with the process,” said James Zhao, a general manager at Lens Technology. “That will put me in a very awkward position. If there’s a problem, she’d say, ‘Why didn’t you see that?’ ” Read the rest of this entry »

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Permatang Pauh win shows M’sia ready for more women leaders

by Syerleena Abdul Rashid
Free Malaysia Today
May 9, 2015

COMMENT

The voters of Permatang Pauh have spoken. They have chosen dignity over conceit, honesty over corruption, coherence over illogic.

By now, Malaysians from all walks of life have heard of PKR President Wan Azizah Wan Ismail’s victory in the Permatang Pauh by-election. She won with a majority of 8,841 votes and defeated Barisan Nasional’s (BN) Suhaimi Sabudin. Her victory symbolises the yearning Malaysians have for much needed political reforms, ending tyrannical regimes, upholding social justice and above all, restoring democracy.

However for the women of this country, her triumphant return into Parliament symbolises a newfound hope that Malaysians are more than ready to discard traditionalist views and are keen on accepting women in leadership roles. Wan Azizah, herself, acknowledged how essential women’s roles are in supporting socio-political reform movements, “Women’s political, social and economic rights are an integral and inseparable part of their human rights”. Read the rest of this entry »

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Attack on Aisyah proves stupidity

By Mariam Mokhtar
Malaysiakini
Mar 23, 2015

It takes a brave Malay woman to say what the whole nation is thinking, and it is amazing how many Malay men cannot wait to show the world the ugly face of the Malay psyche.

The threats of physical violence and rape on BFM host Aisyah Tajudin, for her satirical take on the Kelantan hudud law, have proven that despite receiving the ‘best education in the world’, many Malays remain shallow, servile and seriously stupid. Only insecure, egotistical Malay men would feel threatened, not just by the truth, but by a woman, and worse still, a Malay woman.

The rakyat’s problem is that Malaysia’s religious men aspire to become politicians, and its politicians pretend to be religious men.

The latest hudud debacle has very little to do with religion. It is about power. Power over the Malays in Malaysia. Power to overcome any non-Malay resistance. And power to crush any opposition, especially from progressive Malays, who represent the biggest threat. Read the rest of this entry »

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Take action against those who make threats online

– Syerleena Abdul Rashid
The Malaysian Insider
21 March 2015

“I want to meet her too… I haven’t punched anyone in a long time… Who cares if anyone calls me a cuckold for hitting a woman… she should die.”

Above is one of the many comments targeted at Aisyah Tajuddin. I have one simple question to ask: does this comment enrage you? If it doesn’t, then you are misogynistic, which simply means you hate women. If you don’t understand what misogyny is and find the video anti-Islamic without even viewing the entire video, then that simply means you suffer from a deficit of intellectualism and that, my friend, can lead to destructive consequences.

The BFM video that sparked a mass hysteria of misplaced vitriol showcased the ugliness of the Malay/Muslim siege mentality. The video has since been taken down but the after-effects that continue to linger will forever haunt the rest of us. The numerous hate-filled threats on social media solidify the fact that online misogyny is equally disturbing and must be taken seriously. What makes these comments worse is the anonymity cyberspace provides for these cyber-bigots to troll around ruthlessly. Read the rest of this entry »

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