30 years after Beijing – Where are the women in Malaysian politics?

WE, the undersigned, call upon the Malaysian government and Opposition parties at both federal and state levels to introduce party-list seats with a gender quota. Malaysia is the Asean Chair in 2025, yet we embarrassingly rank ninth in women’s parliamentary representation in South-East Asia.

Malaysia should consider emulating Thailand and Taiwan where their Parliament has closed list proportional representation (CLPR) seats with a gender quota in parallel with first-past-the-post (FPTP) seats. This can guarantee a minimum percentage of women representation.

Introducing such a hybrid system, called mixed member majoritarian, at the Federal level requires amendment to the Federal Constitution, and hence a cross-party consensus. At the state level, the existing appointed seats allowed in Pahang (five), Sabah (six), and Terengganu (four) can be easily converted to CLPR-like “women-only additional seats” allocated to parties based on their vote shares in the normal first-past-the-post elections.

States can also create “top-up women-only additional seats” that guarantees a minimum of 30% women’s representation by adding just enough women appointed as lawmakers to close the gap from 30%.

Initiated by the Penang Women’s Development Corporation, this innovation was presented in a white paper to the state legislature in November 2022 – unfortunately, its implementation was not pursued.

On Aug 12, 2025, the Selangor exco member for women’s development, Anfaal Shaari, proposed that Selangor implement top-up women-only additional seats, which may make Selangor the first Malaysian state to attain the international 30% benchmark.

Sept 15, 2025, was the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted at the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women, which called for a minimum 30% women’s representation in all decision-making bodies, including legislatures.

After 30 years, taking into account non-elected Speakers, deputy Speakers, and appointed members alongside elected members, only 30 (13.45%) out of 223 members of the Dewan Rakyat and 72 (11.56%) out of 623 state assemblymen are women.

This puts Malaysia at a very low 152nd spot out of 188 countries in women’s parliamentary representation according to Inter-Parliamentary Union monitoring as of July 2, 2025. Among South-East Asia countries, Malaysia performs better only than Brunei (158th). 

Contrary to the perception that Malaysia lacks women talents in politics, we strongly believe that Malaysia lacks even more male retirees. In Malaysia, on average, women are better educated than men. Even in rural areas, women talents would emerge if given the opportunities to take up leadership responsibilities.

Women’s representation can only go up if some male incumbents are either replaced by female successors within the party or by female challengers from a rival party.

However, due to two features our first-past-the-post  electoral system often stands in the way of internal replacement of male incumbents by women candidates.

First, as only one candidate is elected from one constituency, women are often overlooked. Second, as first-past-the-post seats are won on personal following besides party logo, popular male incumbents can threaten sabotage to resist efforts by party leadership to replace them with women candidates.

These two features of the first-past-the-post system require candidates to match the desired characteristics of their constituencies, which could be ethnicity/subethnicity, religion, language, home state, mannerisms, visibility to issues championed, and gender. For this reason, Malaysia may have an oversupply of women talents from some urban areas but much fewer suitable constituencies for them to stand. Also, strong male incumbents may resist women quotas due to the fear that women candidates may replace them rather than weaker male incumbents.

We call upon all political parties to nominate a minimum of 30% women candidates in the 16th General Election (GE16) and state elections. We also urge the Madani government to enact a Political Financing Act with public funding for political parties that is partially tied to the number of women parliamentarians.

Beyond this, we urge all political parties to study and support the creation of closed-list proportional representation (CLPR) seats besides the existing first-past-the-post seats in the Dewan Rakyat and CLPR-like women-only additional seats/top-up women-only additional seats at the state level.

In CLPR, every constituency elects multiple candidates, every party can present multiple candidates in a list with a fixed sequence of candidates; voters choose between party lists, and seats are allocated to parties based on vote share and filled by candidates based on their sequence on the list.

Gender quota can be easily imposed in CLPR seats by dictating specified positions on the list are reserved for women. For example, if the intended women’s quota is 50%, then the first, third, fifth, etc, positions can be reserved for women.

Women candidates do not need to worry about candidate-constituency match. They just need to help their parties to get more CLPR votes so that more women candidates from their parties can be elected. In CLPR, strong male incumbents’ fear of being arbitrarily replaced by new women candidates can also be alleviated.

As Malaysia greets the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Platform with the glaring failure to meet the 30% target we call upon:

> Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said, Minister in Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform);

> Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri, Women, Family and Community Development Minister; and

> Yeo Bee Yin, chairperson of the Parliamentary Special Select Committee on Women, Children and Community Development;

to initiate the federal level conversation on CLPR seats and gender quota.

We call upon:

> Datuk Amirudin Shari, Selangor Chief Minister, to back the introduction of top-up women-only additional seats in Selangor;

> Chow Kuan Yew, Penang Chief Minister, to restart the top-up women-only additional seats project in Penang;

> Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor, Sabah Chief Minister and Gabungan Rakyat Sabah chairman;

> Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal, Parti Warisan president;

> Datuk Seri Bung Moktar Radin, Barisan Nasional Sabah chairman; and

> Datuk Ewon Benedick, Pakatan Harapan Sabah chairman,

to promise in manifesto the conversion of Sabah’s six appointed seats to women-only additional seats.

We call upon

> Datuk Seri Dr Haji Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar, Terengganu Chief Minister, to study the conversion of Terengganu’s four appointed seats to women-only additional seats; and

> Datuk Seri Wan Rosdy Wan Ismail, Pahang Chief Minister, to study the conversion of Pahang’s five appointed seats to women-only additional seats.

This joint statement is initiated by Project Stability and Accountability for Malaysia (Projek Sama) and endorsed by the following organisations and individuals:

CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS

All Women's Action Society (Awam)

Alumni Sidang Wanita Pulau Pinang (ASWIP)

Bait Al Amanah (BAA)

Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ)

Centre For Research on Women and Gender (Kanita), USM

Engage

Lawyer Kamek

Penang Women's Development Corporation (PWDC)

Perkumpulan Perempuan Sabah (PPS)

Persatuan Kepimpinan Wanita Rahmah Kelantan (Mawar)

Persatuan Memangkin Daya Masyarakat (ROSE)

Persatuan Sahabat Wanita Selangor (PSWS)

Pertubuhan Penduduk Berasal Sabah (PPBS)

POW.ER (Pergerakan Wanita.Empowerment and Revolution)

Sabah Women's Action Resource Group (Sao)

SIS Forum (Malaysia) SIS

Tenaganita

Universiti Malaya Association of New Youth (Many)

Vokal Sejiwa (VS)

WOAS4SABAH

Women Empowerment Initiative (WE Initiative/Pertubuhan Wanita Berdaya)

Women's Centre for Change Penang (WCC)

Political parties

Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (Muda)

Parti Bumi Kenyalang (PBK) Sabah Branch

Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) Women’s Wing

Parti Solidariti Tanah Airku (STAR)

Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM)

ELECTED REPRESENATIVES

Datuk Seri Doris Sophia Brodie (MP for Sri Aman/GPS-PRS)

Dr Hafidzah Mustakim (adun for Kota Lama, Kelantan/ PAS)

Lee Boon Heng (adun for Kebun Bunga/ PKR)

Flovia Ng (Sabah Assistant Minister, Community Development and People’s Wellbeing; adun for Tulid, Sabah)

Rodziah Ismail (MP for Ampang/ PKR)

Datuk Seri Saifuddin Abdullah (MP for Indera Mahkota/ Bersatu)

Wasanthee Sinnasamy (adun for Hutan Melintang, Perak/ PKR)

Wong Chen (MP for Subang/ PKR)

OTHER INDIVIDUALS

Abinaya Mohan (Researcher)

Assoc Prof Nor Hafizah Selamat (Researcher)

Bawani Kaniapan (former adun candidate, PSM/Lawyer)

Beverley Natalie Koh (vice president, STAR; chair, WOAS4Sabah)

Candy Chiew (officer)

Chan Quin Er (MCA Central Committee member; Lawyer)

Chong Eng (Former exco member of Penang/DAP; TWOAS for Penang)

Constantine Anthony (businessperson)

Datuk Rohana Weiler (board member, PWDC; TWOAS for Penang)

Datuk Ong Bee Leng (CEO, PWDC; TWOAS for Penang)

Davylandon Rubbin (Engineer)

Dr Alfonso Min (Researcher)

Dr Cecilia Ng (former visiting professor, USM; TWOAS for Penang)

Dr Intan Hashimah Mohd Hashim (Researcher)

Dr Lai Wan Teng (Researcher)

Faezrah Rizalman (Sabah State Chief for Muda)

Fazar Arif (founder, POW.ER)

Joshua Jeremiah Sandrah (businessperson)

Justine Majip (Educationist)

Karen Lai (Activist; TWOAS for Penang)

Masjaliza Hamzah (Activist)

Ooi Hooi Kiang (businessperson)

Peter Koh (Pensioner)

Prof Datuk Noraida Endut (Researcher)

Rusni Tajari (Senior Manager of Strategy and Policy, WBS)

Shabudin Mohd Dun (businessperson)

Siti Harinah Mohd Dun (Assistant Secretary, PPS; Retired teacher)

Suguna Papachan (Teacher)

Yeong Pey Jung (Researcher, Penang Institute; TWOAS for Penang)

Yuen Chew Woon (Retiree)