Do we need women in parliament? - Malaysian perspectives

• Main Authors: Ahmad Zakuan, Ummu Atiyah, Arshad, Rozita
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: HQ The family. Marriage. Woman; JQ Political institutions Asia
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/18516/1/ICAW%202013%201-9.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/18516/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

Some studies showed that men represented women related issues in the legislatures (Tremblay & Pelletier,2000).There are also studies revealed that men and women have stark different in policy preferences especially when it comes to issues directly related to women (feminist) (Lovenduski and Norris, 2003).In some studies, however, it showed that women are less likely to represent women, hence, it is only a symbolic representation of women in the legislatures (Trimble & Arscott, 2003).There are also studies evidently shown that it was the women legislators who initiated, proposed and championed women issues resulting to women friendly policies as outcomes (Whistler & Ellickson, 2010; Mullen, 1999).This paper aims to examine whether women representatives in the Malaysian parliament represent women by proposing women related issues as well as inserting their gendered perspectives in so called, non-women issues.Three issues were selected, namely, single mothers, children and international issues.The first two were regarded as women concerns [1] (Grey, 2006; Powley, 2005) while the last one was closely associated to men’s top issue preference in the legislature (IPU, 1998).The parliamentary debates were content analyzed under these respective themes.