Explainer | Malaysia election 2022: meet 7 women shaking up a political scene saturated by men

More than half of Malaysia’s voters are female, but they have long accounted for a fraction of candidates in state assembly and general elections

In this year’s snap general election women make up only 13.5 per cent of the 1,386 candidates, meaning women’s issues are often neglected

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A woman casts her vote during a state election in Malacca, Malaysia on November 20, 2021. Photo: AP

Published: 8:30am, 13 Nov 2022Updated: 11:36pm, 14 Nov 2022

Malaysian politics has been saturated by men for far too long, with wily veterans and the likes of two-time prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and his foe Anwar Ibrahim regularly taking centre stage in local and global discourse.

But a number of prominent women have been shaking up the country’s political scene for decades, from top party figures like Nurul Izzah Anwar and Zuraida Kamaruddin to relative newcomers like Nurul Ashikin Mabahwi, Siti Rahayu Baharin, Noraishah Mydin Abdul-Aziz, Yeo Bee Yin and Jo-anna Henley Rampas.

Still, experts say that fair representation of women in parliament continues to be hugely lacking as inflexible and hierarchical structures pervade the country’s major parties.

“There are too few women occupying roles in central leadership committees of parties who have influence in naming party candidates,” said Alicia Izharuddin, a lecturer in gender studies at Monash University Malaysia.

Despite women making up more than 50 per cent of registered voters in the country, Malaysia is still among the nations with the lowest proportion of female parliamentarians. In the country’s last general election, less than 11 per cent of candidates were women, according to the election commission.

And in this year’s snap general election, women account for only 13.5 per cent of 1,386 candidates.