Negotiating Gender Equality and Legal Reforms: Women’s Organisations in Kuala Lumpur

Abstract

On the first weekend of March 2004, I attended the celebration of International Women’s Day in Kuala Lumpur. The celebration took place in Kuala Lumpur’s biggest shopping centre, the Mid Valley Megamall, as an event called ‘A Girl’s Day Out—It Starts With Respect’. The event was hosted by the popular television programme 3R, a programme targeting young women in Malaysia. On the official website of 3R, which stands for ‘Relax, Respect, Respond’, the programme presents itself as taking up ‘women’s issues’ and as employing staff members who are engaged in different NGOs. For the first time in the history of International Women’s Day in Malaysia, it was organised not only by the two oldest feminist women’s organisations—the Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) and the All Women’s Action Society (AWAM)—but also by human rights organisations such as the local branch of Amnesty International (AI), the Malaysian Aids Council (MAC), and the Sisters in Islam (SIS), an organisation belonging to the current wave of Muslim feminism.