Discoursing Women’s Political Participation Towards Achieving Sustainable Development: The Case of Women in Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS)

Abstract

Malaysia has been committed to meet its commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. One of the goals is to achieve gender equality. However, in Malaysia, the Global Gender Gap Index which measures gender disparities in economic participation and opportunities, education attainment, health and political empowerment reported that Malaysia ranked at 111 out of 145 countries in 2016. It has fallen far from its overall ranking of 72 in 2006. In terms of political participation, the low score in politics is because of the lack of women in leadership and decision-making positions that dragged down Malaysia's index even though Malaysia had set a target for women to fill 30% or more in decision-making positions. In the recent 14th general election, a total of 252 female candidates named out of the 2,333 parliament and state seats resulted in only 92 female elected representatives. This article provides an overview of women's political participation focusing on members of Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS). There were 30 female respondents interviewed and they were recruited from the two states in Malaysia namely Selangor and Kelantan. It analyses the reasons for women's missing presence at the decision-making level in the party and at national level which contributed to Malaysia's slow achievement of the SDGs. This article will discuss how PAS's organisational structure and women's preference will impose challenges towards Zaireeni Azmi 68 achieving SDG 5. Women themselves determine the level of participation and contributions that they are willing to play in politics.

A systematic review of peer-reviewed gender literature in sustainability science

“…In contrast to the other clusters, the papers in this group are not centered around a certain topic, but rather focus on a general discussion regarding the inclusion of gender issues in research on sustainable development, yet here scholars mainly apply problem-oriented empirical research on gender inequalities, discrimination and biases often on a national scale. Those gender inequalities are often referred to as gender gap and focus mostly on political representation (Azmi 2020;Kreile 2005;Purwanti et al 2018;von Dach 2002), access to education (Assoumou-ella 2019;Cortina 2010;Cheng and Ghajarieh 2011;Suvarna et al 2019) and participation in natural resource management (Sasaki and Chopin 2002;Valdivia and Gilles 2001;Yadav and Sharma 2017). These topical areas also overlap with the mentioned SDGs, 4 (quality education), 8 (decent work), 3 (good health and well-being) and 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions).…”

Bibliometric Analysis of Gender Equality in Islam Analisis Bibliometrik About Gender Equality in Islam

“…Several study Muslim scholars highlight the importance of the basic assumptions and models of interpretation that govern traditional Islamic legal theory and ethics from several alternative scholarships on gender equality in Islam (Duderija, 2020). As a developing country, Malaysia is committed to sustainable development (SDGs) in 2030 and increasing the global gender gap (Azmi, 2020). Gender equality refers to the equality of men and women, so forming an organization is stated for a methodology that is implicit in very active work to date (Ismail et al, 2020).…”

Electric Buses in Malaysia: Policies, Innovations, Technologies and Life Cycle Evaluations

“…Figure 7 shows how the Internet of things (IoT) networks observed the temperature of the battery, health condition, and electronic properties of the buses and chargers while they were in operation. Toshiba, HASETEC Corporation (manufacturer of Super-Quick Chargers), PUES Corporation (producer of electric power trains), and Oriental Consultants Global Company Limited (responsible for economic and environmental evaluation) are the projects partners [43,44].…”