Today is the last day of August, the day Malaysia celebrates its 59th year of independence. It is also the month we observe the National Women’s Day which falls on Aug 25 each year.
Earlier this month, my alma mater’s alumni of Sekolah Seri Puteri, originally known as SMK Perempuan Jalan Kolam Ayer, Kuala Lumpur, for where it was first located, organised a dinner to commemorate the school’s 48th anniversary. Eleven years after Merdeka, in 1968, the school received its first group of 144 female students, becoming one of the all-girls boarding schools in the country.
Looking at the 360 women who attended dinner that night from various student batches — who grew up and lived together during an important phase of their lives as teenagers — I ponder on what Merdeka means to me as a woman, and how much Malaysia has done for girls and women of the country since it gained independence in 1957.
There are countries where being a girl is almost a crime, so to speak. There are places where a woman is viewed and treated as an object; where a woman cannot drive or have features of her face seen by the world around her.
While most people do not live away from home until after secondary school, these women and I left home at the age of 13, and were granted independence that came invaluable in later years.
Born 12 years after Merdeka, it was definitely education that enabled me to solidify my strengths as a woman, and to clearly compare with other women in other countries. I am thankful to this country that continues to educate girls.
Allowing education for girls and women is the most effective way to improve the lives of individual families, as well as to bring economic development. The country’s investment in education has no gender discrimination. Today, it has led to Malaysian women achieving significant progress in key socio-economic areas.
Upon independence, great efforts have been in place in this country to forge greater gender equality, particularly towards an equitable nation in education with increased access to education, as well as training for improvement in literacy rates and enrolment at all levels of education.
The establishment of all-girls’ schools like the one I attended, paralleled the establishment of the all-boys’ schools to provide equal opportunities for girls to advance in education.
An early study in 1979 by Charles Hirschman on Political Independence and Educational Opportunity in Peninsular Malaysia suggested the post-Independence era saw one major reduction in educational inequality between genders.
Equality was not achieved prior to independence. During the colonial era, the cultural bias made females less likely to progress through the educational system especially at the initial stages.
The study stated that the early 1960s witnessed “the independent government to be able to virtually eliminate in a single generation the educational inequalities, that had haunted colonial society and fostered the stereotype that Malay culture did not value education”.
It also suggested that “the general secular forces of social change, including exposure to the mass media and recognition of the uses of literacy, have probably convinced most parents that education was as valuable for their daughters as it was for their sons”.
Since Malaysia gained independence, the enrolment of female students has increased tremendously. Between 1957 and 2000, the number of female students at the primary level increased by more than three and a half times while the secondary students reached a total enrolment of 985,692 students.
In 1959, female undergraduates comprised only 10.7 per cent of the total student enrolment in University of Malaya. As more women pursued higher education, by the year 2000, the percentage had increased to 51.3 per cent of the total enrolment in local universities, reflecting the evolution.
Last weekend saw thousands of students registering for their first-year studies for the 2016/2017 academic session. Today, the latest figure shows that female students — making up 70 per cent out of the 39,862 places offered— are outnumbering males in our public universities.
At the same time, as of April this year, 34 per cent of the top management in the public sector are women and 26 per cent of women held top positions in the corporate sector.
Many of the girls I attended school with have made a variety of different choices as women: some are married, many have children, and some are stay-at-home mothers while others are doctors or lawyers.
We all learnt as young girls that females can be leaders in any area just by looking around us at our peers. We were given the tools to succeed in whatever way suited us best.
We were given the idea that there is no such thing as boundaries or limits once you set your mind to something. The knowledge and the confidence that come from these opportunities through education cannot be discounted.
I myself see education as essential to my freedom and self-determination. And for that, I am grateful for the country’s independence that has afforded me the endless opportunities, limitless learning and potential for growth as a woman.
Hazlina Aziz is NST’s education editor, and is an ex-teacher who is always on the lookout for weirdly-spelt words