Years before the global #HeForShe campaign was launched by UN Women (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women) in 2014, the women’s rights movement in Malaysia already had an ally in young activist Yu Ren Chung.
The engineering graduate joined Women’s Aid Organisation in 2012, fresh from university.
It was while at university in Chicago, Illinois in the US that Yu was exposed to the work of women’s rights activists back home in Malaysia.
He attended a talk by rights activist Zainah Anwar organised by Malaysian students at his university and was inspired, immediately.
“Zainah blew me away with her speech on Sisters in Islam, women’s rights and the amazing things women’s groups were doing in Malaysia. It was very inspiring,” shares Yu.
It was an awakening for Yu. He had gone to an all-boys school and hardly had any insights on the lived realities of women in Malaysia, let alone globally.
“The talk really spurred my interest in the area and I started doing research on women’s issues and the women’s movement. I read about Irene Fernandez and the many other women who were doing tremendous work in the field and I knew I wanted a career where I could contribute to a more equal society,” says the 30-year-old feminist who changed his career path to champion women.
Yu joined the Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) as an advocacy officer five years ago. He took a one-year break in 2015 to pursue his Masters in Public Policy at the University of Oxford in Britain.
Yu now has a comrade in Kelvin Ang who joined WAO as a community engagement officer a year ago.
Like Yu, Ang’s awareness on women’s rights began while at university, also in the US.
“Women’s rights and human rights are not topics that are talked about anywhere in school here. At university, through discourses in class and with friends, I became more aware.
“Boys, consciously or not, feel this pressure to ‘behave like a boy’ ... to look and think in prescribed ways to fit into the mould of what a male should be. In college, I learnt the tools to articulate my thoughts and my identity,” explains Ang, 26, who was a student of English Literature.
Both Yu and Ang are proud feminists who feel the responsibility to speak about the inequalities women face, even outside of work.
“My friends are all very supportive of what I do although maybe they don’t quite understand why I’m a feminist or what I do. Like me, coming from an all-boys school, they have not been exposed to these issues. They are not bad people but they’ve just never had to think about the experiences some women have that are different from theirs and why it is so,” says Yu.
And this is precisely why it is so important for men to stand with women in the pursuit for gender equality.
“The spaces men hang out in can be like a boys club where sometimes the talk and the jokes can be sexist. It’s not nasty but it’s still sexism. That’s why it is important for boys and men to speak out because only men have access to these spaces. The question is whether or not we are prepared to say something even though it may not be cool or popular when we are faced with sexism,” shares Yu. Men, they opine, have a moral obligation to fight for equal rights.
“Men have benefitted from centuries of patriarchy. Even if they aren’t perpetrating violence or oppressing women, by being silent they are sustaining the status quo. The fact is that men have had opportunities that women have been denied and we should use our privilege to help fight for an equal society,” says Yu.
Speaking out about sexism in society isn’t a moral or personal judgement on all men, Ang points out, but a commentary on a society that has failed to look out for its women in equal measure.
“Some men might take this the wrong way and get their backs up when we talk about sexism and gender equality. But I think it’s important for men to realise this it isn’t a personal or moral judgement on them, unless of course they are behaving in a sexist way. But it is a moral imperative to question things around you that aren’t right,” says Ang, adding that more men need to get on board the women’s rights movement in Malaysia.
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