Getting More Women into Politics under One-Party Dominance: Collaboration, Clientelism, and Coalition Building in the Determination of Women's Representation in Malaysia

Abstract

Malaysia's representation of women as parliamentarians remains one of the lowest in comparison to other Southeast Asian and global parliamentary democracies. However, when contextualized against Malaysia's politics of divides and dissent starting from 1999 onward, there are some newer characteristics of women's involvement in formal politics. This paper explores the specificities of women's experience in formal politics under the one-party dominant rule of the National Front before it was defeated in the May 2018 general election. The paper questions various incidents of political transitioning from an old to a newer political regime. Processes such as the collaboration between women's civil society and formal state political actors, the cultivation of clientelist and patronage relations, and the maintenance of a cohesive multiparty coalition as a strategy for electoral advantage have all had fruitful bearings on the way the formalization of women in politics has developed. However, given the insufficiency of these developments for increasing women's representation, this paper proposes the more reliable gender quota or reserved seats mechanism as one of the considerations for gender electoral reform.