Women matter
By MARINA MAHATHIR
MUSINGS
Sunday, 26 Jun 2022
LET us ask this straightforward question: does the Attorney General’s Chambers, and in fact the Government, think that women are second-class citizens? How else can we think about the AGC appealing against Malaysian women having the right to confer their citizenship to their children born abroad, a right that is automatic for men? Worse still, how can the AGC claim that the 2001 amendment that added the word “gender” to Article 8(2) of the Federal Constitution be invalid?
That article originally stated that no one can be discriminated against based on race, religion, descent, or place of birth. To keep up with the times, Parliament amended that article to include the word “gender”. For the first time, women felt protected by the Constitution if not always in reality.
Now here we have the AGC no less telling us that in effect women don’t matter because that amendment should not have happened. It is shocking beyond belief.
What is so difficult about giving women the right to pass their citizenship to their own children just because they were born abroad to foreign fathers? If there is no issue with men having children overseas by foreign wives, then why should there be with women?
The answer of course lies in the patriarchal mindset of our mostly male authorities. Are they afraid of Malaysian women all running off to marry foreigners? Some men feel affronted by the idea of “their” women marrying men from other countries. Indeed some 1.86 million women, some 12% of the Malaysian female population, make up most of our international diaspora. Not all of them went abroad because of marriage, many found greater career opportunities in other countries. But if the AGC is the misogynistic model of Malaysian men, looking elsewhere for husbands becomes a more attractive prospect. Meanwhile men can have any number of wives parked overseas safe in the knowledge that all those kids are Malaysian regardless of whether they spent any time in this country at all.
What are women supposed to do if they become widowed or divorced after having children overseas? They have the right to return home, but their children cannot stay for the long term even when they are minors and still need the care of their mothers. Either they have the untenable choices of being separated from their children, or remaining overseas or returning home but having to go through the expensive rigmarole of continually renewing their children’s visas. Meanwhile their schooling is disrupted not to mention the emotional turmoil that all of them go through. The message to these women is clear: since you chose to marry a foreign man, we don’t want you anymore.
The other choice women have is to ensure they deliver their babies on Malaysian soil which would automatically grant their children citizenship. I know one woman who returned home to have all three of her children just so their status was assured. But this is not something every woman can afford to do. What if, for health reasons, she is simply unable to travel?
Given that so many talented women are part of the overseas diaspora, why do we give them up so easily so that other nations can benefit? Talent Corp was set up some time ago to attract Malaysians home. But for women, the issue of their children’s nationality persists. Now the AGC has pretty much blown any hope of a solution out of the water.
All Malaysian women should be livid about this. Why is it that when it comes to voting, our vote is equal to men’s, yet when it comes to this, we’re considered only half citizens? Is the AGC not ashamed of so blatantly pushing for discrimination? Were they not born from mothers, have sisters or daughters?
I have a daughter who was born 35 years ago abroad. She does not have a Malaysian passport but has permanent residence and has lived here all her life. This is her home; she is one of those who only wanted to return after studying in another country. Yet she cannot vote because she is not a citizen. It’s true that she could have chosen to take up Malaysian citizenship at age 18. But the point is that she (and I) had to deal with bureaucracy to make that choice happen. If I were a man, I would never have had to think about this because she would have enjoyed that right from birth.
But maybe this is a good thing, for the government to show itself for what it is, for all that misogyny to be in full view of everyone. Women make up half the population but are still treated as if we only half-belong here. Some women even believe that women cannot be leaders, echoing the propaganda that men have been spewing lately. Like the Handmaid’s Tale, we are only good enough to give birth but not to even make decisions on our children.
Yet if the system dictates that we cannot give our best to our children, we are immediately gaslighted as bad mothers. Men who neglect their children, who care so little for their offspring that they won’t pay for their maintenance, get away scot-free, even lauded as good pious citizens.
It’s time women fought back against this attitude. We can talk about educating our sons to be better human beings, to treat their sisters and female schoolmates with respect but that’s for the future. We need to deal with the situation now before we lose even more women to the rest of the world. Whenever the next general election arrives, we should be reminding women voters how valuable our votes are and demand better treatment in return.
Marina Mahathir is incensed that after almost 65 years of independence, we’re still having to face Neanderthal thinking about women. The views expressed here are solely her own.
