ABSTRACT

How has the ‘gender and competitiveness’-agenda been taken up and/or resisted within Malaysian civil society – and, in particular, within the women’s movement? In what has been described as a semi-authoritarian context where the room for manoeuvre that activists had was highly restricted, groups frequently worked within the limits of statist agendas in order to secure some level of success in bringing gender issues to the fore. Moreover, the adoption of gender agendas within government planning and policymaking – especially those that pertain to women’s leadership, women’s economic empowerment and women’s labour force participation – often tends to be reproduced within the Malaysian women’s movement’s turn towards ‘market feminism’. The chapter provides two contrasting examples of how the women’s movement has engaged with statist gender agendas. First, by looking at campaigns and initiatives around the representation of women on corporate boards, and second, looking to the ways through which Malaysian women’s groups have attempted to broaden understandings of gender and economic empowerment. The chapter draws upon extensive interview material conducted with members of the Malaysian women’s movement as well as other civil society actors involved in the issue of women’s representation on corporate boards.