Women's emancipation in colonial Malaya

To avoid the anachronism of the term feminist, it may be advisable to chart the history of feminism in Malaysia with the recorded usage and political championing of 'women's liberation' in the early twentieth century. The first documented use of women's liberation or women's emancipation as a political and social project in 1920s Malaya was by Malay Muslim male reformers and writers Syed Syeikh Al-Hadi and Zainal Abidin Ahmad, better known as Za'aba.^[3] Although they advocated the education of women and girls as a means to women's emancipation, the Malay Muslim modernists, or kaum muda, stressed the importance of Islamic learning as a way of equipping Malay women with the skills to fulfill their primary role, as educators of their children.^[4]

In the post-war years between 1946 and 1948, women from different ethnic groups mobilised against anti-colonialism and issues related to women's inferior status in occupied Malaya.^[5] Although they were members of the female-arm of nationalist and communist parties founded by men, the women became more radicalised in their gender-oriented anti-colonial aims and eventually gained semi-autonomous status from their parent parties. Prominent radical women of the period included the likes of Shamsiah Fakeh and later, Khatijah Sidek.

Sexual and domestic violence against women

The first women's NGO in Malaysia, the Women's Aid Organisation (WAO), was founded in the mid 1980s as a shelter for women and children who needed legal consultation and protection from domestic violence. Soon, other NGOs, such as All Women's Action Society (AWAM) emerged to campaign against the rising number of reported incidences of violence against women. Most women's NGOs which were founded since are located in the urban centres of Peninsular Malaysia.

Malaysia outlawed marital rape in 2007.^[6][7]

Child brides and forced marriages

Cases of child marriages gained nationwide attention in recent years as a human rights and gender issue. In nearly all cases, under-aged girls were married off to men much older than themselves. As most child marriages occur in Malaysia's Malay-Muslim community and thereby sanctioned by Sharia courts, Islamic reasons are often cited as a moral and legal justification for marrying off under-aged girls.^[8] Young female rape survivors are sometimes pressured into marrying their abusers as a way of mitigating gross sexual abuses.^[9]

The NGO-isation of feminism in Malaysia

Feminism in Malaysia is championed primarily by activists within women's NGOs. There are setbacks to the apparent NGO-isnation of feminism in Malaysia, defined as the donor-led and institutionalisation of activism or 'Activism Inc.'^[14] The funder-led agenda of women's NGOs in Malaysia resulted in the constraining of feminist activism to fulfill the requirement and targets set by donors. Other problems arise from the NGO-isation of feminism that appear at odds with the spirit of feminism, namely the inter- and intra-organisational income inequalities amongst women workers of NGOs resulting from unequal distribution of funding.