Gender Gaps In More Pressing Areas Routinely Ignored

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There has been a call for targeted support for male students to address the gender gap in Malaysian universities, where women make up 59 percent of enrolment, an 18-point difference compared to male admission nationwide.
Having a student body that consists of 70 percent women in that particular university has also been cited as a concern of disparity requiring an address.
It has stirred heated discussions and debates among the public - some shared their experience in school, that poorly performing male students with 2As are given leeway to enter the top science stream classes, while girls with 7-8As are turned away.
The higher women's enrolment rate has long served as a convenient shield for misogynists in deterring the overwhelming claim that women in this country have been severely subjugated, treated unfairly in multifaceted areas of life, and dismissed as structural discrimination against women, be it in personal and private spaces.
For years, it was held up as proof, a convenient excuse, whenever legitimate concerns regarding women’s inherent rights were brought up, that “women are doing fine”, a rhetorical tool used to invalidate legitimate concerns raised by women’s rights groups and individuals.
Now it doesn’t serve the purpose of male domination, the system must be rebooted, or rather, rigged to render it compatible with males’ preferences and excellence.
We hear claims that the education system has been “over-feminised”, that too many teachers are women, that studying in class is more suited to women compared to men, which is attributed to male underperformance in academics.
While any call for support to encourage par excellence among genders is applauded, the urgency stands in stark contrast to how gender gaps in more pressing areas, disadvantaging and discriminating against women as a whole, are routinely ignored, including young women as a marginal, underrepresented group.
This pattern is also implicated in the labour market. Despite outperforming men academically, Malaysian women remain among the least represented in the workforce in Asean.
According to the World Bank, Malaysia ranked third lowest after Myanmar and the Philippines, with only 51.6 percent women labour force participation compared to 78.4 percent for men - a 25-point chasm.
And even when women work, they are valued less: Statistics Department data in 2022 shows that women earned an average of RM42,080 compared to men’s RM63,117. For every RM100 a man earns, a woman earns only RM66.67.
In other words, women still face a 33 percent gender pay gap, a full third less, an unscrupulously large gap, year after year.
Representation and leadership
It is rippled in a high-stakes field such as politics. Sixty years after independence, we barely scratch the surface in achieving 30 percent women's representation in politics. Malaysia has never breached half of the allocated charity quota; the highest was merely 14.4 percent in 2018, which then regressed to 13.5 percent with only 30 women MPs in 2022.
A staggering 69 percent gap between population demographics and elected representatives has never sparked the same institutional alarm despite the consequences of male-dominated leadership, incompetence, and rampant corruption that have plagued the nation that Malaysians live with daily.
Which brings us to representation and leadership. While the world celebrates Zohran Mamdani breaking barriers as the first Muslim mayor in the US, Malaysia has reassigned its own trailblazer: Maimunah Shariff, Kuala Lumpur’s first woman mayor.
Former Kuala Lumpur mayor Maimunah ShariffHer resume is outstanding; the former mayor has 39 years’ experience in urban planning and urban regeneration under her belt, was also the former Penang mayor, and the first Asian woman to serve as executive director of UN-Habitat.
From being the first woman municipal councillor of Seberang Perai, Penang, to the acting director-general of the United Nations Office at Nairobi and under-secretary-general of the United Nations in the UN System, she has broken tremendous barriers most Malaysians can barely imagine navigating, especially imposed against Muslim Malay women in a deeply patriarchal, ethnonationalist environment.
The chatters have been speculating that her “cold storage” was due to her accused ceremonial nature of work, despite her worth mentioning achievements in just a short year, such as the Kuala Lumpur City Hall’s RM27.6 million operating surplus last year, a sharp turnaround from the RM75.3 million deficit in 2023, and the RM283 million deficit in 2022.
She was also honoured as the Best City Council Leader (Bandaraya Category) at the Housing and Local Government Minister’s Excellence Awards 2025, on top of the Leadership Award at the Smart City Expo World Congress 2025 in Barcelona.
She began her tenure on Aug 15 last year with bold promises of reform, pledging zero tolerance for corruption, a cleaner city, and an open-door policy to enhance governance. Maimunah was 63 when she was appointed; now been replaced by 58-year-old Fadlun Mak Ujud from Putrajaya Corporation.
Similarly, the same question that lingers, which feathers she ruffles; let’s not pretend Kuala Lumpur is an ordinary city hall posting. Kuala Lumpur is a billion-ringgit playground where development approvals, land deals, and political patronage networks are.
A woman who refuses to play by “big boys’ club” rules is an existential threat to that system.
A leader who insists on clean governance threatens an ecosystem built on “business as usual”, and that is enough to rattle those who have long treated KL as their private fiefdom.
Her redeployment is less a mystery than a reminder: integrity is dangerous in a system that rewards complicity and docility to remain in power.
Rigged playing field
But her gender made the backlash sharper. In Malaysian politics, women are too often evaluated not by their competence but by their compliance.
The unwritten but prevailing rule is simple: a woman who leads with spine, not softness, disrupts the boys’ club, and disruption is unforgivable.
The rigged playing field where qualified women are dismissed, sidelined, or pushed out not for incompetence, but for refusing to be docile, decorative, or easily controlled.
The former KL mayor’s treatment is not an isolated personnel decision; it’s a textbook example of how systems react when women lead with principles, not patronage and power play. And until this pattern is confronted, Malaysia will continue losing good women and men who could actually fix what the old guard keeps breaking.
Between misplaced concern to curb the growth of females who thrive based on merit, grit of hard work, and the intentional sidelining of a highly competent woman leader cloaked in character defect rather than actual political, financial, and moral corruption, the message is painfully clear: Malaysia punishes women for succeeding on merit and getting the job done.
Until we confront this truth, the aspiration of becoming a democratic, competent, and truly inclusive nation remains painfully out of sight. - Mkini
TYRA HANIM holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations from the University of Aberdeen and is the founder of Suara Anak Muda.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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