Can women in Malaysian be a changemakers? Political involvement and decision-making

Abstract

The National Women Policy aims to prepare a conducive environment for women that are more women-friendly to elevate their status in all aspects including politics. However, despite the statement, women are still lacking behind in the political sector in Malaysia. Indeed, the Malaysian women have been shown to outperform men in the academic and even professional job market. Despite the supposed superiority of Malaysian women's intellectual abilities, the number of women who are allowed to participate in nation building is abysmally low. Malaysian women are absent from many leadership positions, the economic market, politics, and/or decision-making. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine the challenges women face in terms of political participation and decision-making. The data were randomly distributed to the public to obtain an unbiased result from the community in Malaysia. Approximately 200 respondents were contacted through WhatsApp, email, and other platforms, yielding a response rate of 58% (116 respondents). The data were analyzed using SPSS to achieve the objectives. Thus, descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation were used to analyze the variables of the study. The results suggest that demographic characteristics such as education level and monthly income are important components that significantly influence women’s political involvement and decision-making. In detail, there is a significant correlation at the 0.05 levels between political engagement and respondents' level of education (0.214*) as well as decision-making and respondents' education level (0.188*). This results proof how respondents’ background influences their political engagement and decision-making. Moreover, decision-making is significantly related to political involvement, women who are able to make a decision have more power to participate in politics than women who are unable to do so. This study can provide insight into the landscape of women's participation in politics and decision-making and ways to support them; educating them can improve their political involvement and decision-making. Therefore, this study has value to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all including women, that in return will improve gender equality, women political involvement, and decision-making.