Time to review sexist laws, says lawyer

SHAH ALAM - The stark reality is that in many parts of the world today, women are denied access to pivotal rights and treated like second-class citizens for being female and this includes Malaysia.

Association of Women Lawyers vice president Daniella Zulkifili said due to this, laws in the country needed to be interpreted to ensure there was no gender discrimination in the laws.

“I think we really need to interpret our laws based on that and more needs to be done to put that into place to ensure that we actually treat women the same way we treat men or any other gender,” she said.

Citing sexist citizenship law as an example, Daniella said it kind of implied that women were no as important in the society and considered as second class citizens considering that it was a matter that has been put into the constitution many years ago.

“Women cannot confer citizenship if the children are born overseas to a foreign father but what does that mean since it does not work the same way for men?

“They (men) can confer citizenship just like that,” she said.

Daniella was speaking as one of the panellists in Sinar Daily's Wacana English Edition programme entitled “Malaysia’s Progress: Where are we now?”, which was aired on Sinar Daily’s digital platforms, tonight.

She said this was the time for constitutional amendments to be made as women have recognised the discrimination against them.

She added that under the constitution, it was already stated that there shall be no gender discriminations.

“This is 2022, I think we need to really look back and say “oh this does not work anymore” especially because we now recognised that there cannot be discrimination against women,” she added.

Besides Daniella, the other panellists on the programme were #BangsaMalaysia project coordinator Nathaniel Tan and Crisis Management and Conflict De-escalation consultant Zarra Z. Rawi.

The programme focused on issues concerning social transformation and opportunity as well as equitable development especially for the youths and the underserved communities.