Addressing gender is good governance

COMMENT I am encouraged by what I see as a greater commitment in PAS to women’s participation in political life.

There is finally the real possibility of a woman vice president. There is talk of a 30 percent quota of seats for women in the next legislature and 30 percent women’s candidacy in the next general election.

In 2011, PAS will implement a 90-day maternity leave plan for women civil servants. What a whopper since March 8, 2008 general election!

And I take Mahfuz Omar’s (left) jolly remark at the last muktamar of allowing the party president “to appoint two vice-presidents was to strike a balance in case all the three elected vice-presidents turned out to be women,” to mean that the male leadership is appreciative of the aspirations of women.

In that light I am perplexed by Siti Zailah’s statement on YouTube. She is the vice president of Dewan Muslimat and MP for Rantau Panjang in Kelantan. The Muslimat’s call for a woman as a vice president is not related to gender, she said. The “G” word is apparently taboo.

Electoral quotas

PAS Secretary General Mustafa Ali (right) had referred to the UN Women’s Conference when raising the issue of electoral quotas for women. I assume that the party leadership must have been appreciative of the gender analysis underlying the targets for women.

That gender analysis is the product of deliberations over several world conferences on women. The actors are both governments and NGOs, including those from Muslim-majority states.

If PAS or any of its coalition partners in Pakatan are thinking of winning Putrajaya, they cannot afford to fall behind an international consensus. If they are to lead Malaysia they should begin thinking of the international cooperation expected of member states to the UN.

All Pakatan-held states with Selangor in the lead have implemented or will implement the 90-day maternity leave. We do not know if PAS and its coalition partners actually have a gender blueprint involving gender analysis and an action plan. The 90-day maternity leave in Selangor was cited as part of PKR’s welfare programme.

Mainstreaming gender

The gender analysis since the 1975 Nairobi World Conference on Women has changed. Targeting women continues to be important. In addition, the new deal requires that gender mainstreaming should be done across the board.

There are two tracks to gender mainstreaming. Women’s specific needs and concerns must be addressed. These needs are mapped through a gender analysis. The second track requires the application of a gender analysis to the design and implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres. This includes the welfare programme in Selangor.

This second track is almost always overlooked by governments and there is a worry that Pakatan Rakyat may not be the exception.

A gender analysis takes into account the social roles ascribed to both women and men in our culture and society. This would help us discover the differences of impact that policies including legislation may have over women and men because of the roles we carry as women and men, and girls and boys in our society.

It helps us discover if there is a difference between women and men in their access to and control of resources, and whatever constraints they have in relation to each other.

The differential impact will help policy makers plan better. More importantly it would ensure gender justice or the elimination of the disadvantage that women, men, girls and boys may face relative to each other.

Let’s run a quick analysis on the 90-day maternity leave for women. Women continue to be the primary care-giver in the Malaysian household, a function that is valued and will continue to be valued. This is regardless of whether she is a fulltime homemaker or is juggling two jobs - the homemaker and a wage earner.

Practical and Strategic Needs

For the sake of argument, as only women can physically bear children, their needs related to pregnancy must be specifically addressed. This is to prevent a disadvantage to her where she is both a wage earner and a care-giver. Sacking women for pregnancy is an act of discrimination. That discrimination has to be purged from policy, law and jurisprudence.  

The new gender analysis recognises that targeting women alone and targeting her specific needs in relation to her care-giver role does reinforce a stereotype that women are natural mothers, that women are better child-carers, that her ‘proper’ or ‘predestined’  role is child-caring.

We know that mothering and care-giving are not natural to one sex. It can be learned. While we address women’s specific needs in providing maternity leave, the new analysis requires us to simultaneously address a strategic need.

A strategic need include actions for control over decision-making, the need for property rights, for political participation to help shape public decisions etc. Practical needs of women and men focus on the immediate condition of women and men.

Strategic needs concern their relative position in relation to each other. In effect, strategic needs are about resolving gender based inequalities and changing gender roles.

One example of a strategic need in the maternity leave example is to provide for paternity leave. Not all women want to be the primary care-giver or expected to be one. We should not assume that because women bear children, they should also be the main care-giver.

Today, we may find that men want to share in care-giving or even be the primary care-giver. There is always a range of possibilities through time, as culture is not static. It changes with time and place.

Removing barriers

While childbearing in our society is limited to women, parenting is not. A gender sensitive policy would move towards parental leave as opposed to maternity leave. The rule should be clear. However, operational guidelines to parental leave may differ according to the parents involved and their priorities as parents and as members of the workforce.

This is a very small example of what gender analysis and gender mainstreaming is about.

Has the Pakatan Rakyat government adopted a gender mainstreaming policy since March 8, 2008?

The notion that it can wait is false. Gender analysis and gender mainstreaming are required for as long as there are males and females represented in the electorate. It is just good governance.

The proposal for quotas is of course important and laudable and we wait for its realisation in GE13. However gender justice should not be left to women legislators alone. A simultaneous program of gender mainstreaming is required to remove barriers for women and men to achieving gender justice. This is what decent governments do to enhance the quality of our lives.

SALBIAH AHMAD is a lawyer by training and works on human rights with a specialisation on Islam and gender.