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THE USE OF ENGLISH IN CONTEMPORARY MALAYSIAN FEMINIST

ACTIVISM

ALICIA IZHARUDDIN

School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Abstract:

Feminism and the women's movement in Malaysia are products of specific historical
and political contexts. Following this logic, the language used in feminist activism can also
be seen as product of similar contexts. The focus of this article is the current state of the
feminist movement in Malaysia and its linguistic framework as the effects of changes in
language policy. This article then considers the use and relevance of feminist theory in
Malaysian feminist activism as linked to the predominance of English in Malaysian feminist
discourse. This article also argues that the predominance of English poses challenges to the
inclusion of working-class class feminist agendas but offers opportunities in strengthening
transnational feminist linkages. Language thus becomes an underlying issue which may
explain the successful inroads and setbacks faced by feminist organizations in Malaysia. The
issues of language and hegemony of this article couches itself within ongoing debates on
Anglophone hegemony in feminist discourse in non-Western nations and how feminist
concepts in English are engaged in multilingual contexts.

Keywords: Feminism, Malaysia, feminist theory, activism, language.

Introduction

This article discusses the role of language in disseminating contemporary feminist

discourse in Malaysia and speculates on the ways historical processes related to changes in
language policy, ethnic and class divisions have resulted in the predominance of English in
Malaysian feminist activism. Insights on the use of English language in feminist discourse can be
found through the voices of Malaysian activists and former activists themselves. The language of
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feminism is relatively alien to the public discursive landscape in Malaysia where terms such as
'gender', 'sexuality', and even 'feminism' exist as loanwords. When 'gender' and 'sexuality' and
their different linguistic incarnations reflective of the country's multilingual fabric appear at all,
they are sporadic and usually enmeshed in the discourse of academia, activism, and human rights
in the English language. In spite of these, feminism as a form of struggle for 'women's rights' is
gradually becoming more accepted in Malaysian public discourse though it is still often considered
a Western concept1.

Although there is recognition of feminist activism in Malaysia, it is subsumed under the

banner of women's struggle against discrimination and injustice. In other words, women's struggle
is not always recognized as being a feminist one. Academics and activists alike have long struggled
to define Malaysian feminism2. However, I, like Ng, Mohamad, and Tan3 believe that the search of
the definition of a Malaysian feminism is not urgent seeing as “it is pointless to seek an essential
Malaysian feminism unique in its own identity or origins, given that territorial markers cannot
curb cultural and ideological exchanges”4. Ng, Mohamad and Tan contend that there are various
manifestations of feminisms in Malaysia that somehow defies a unitary identity and instead
embraces the differences along sub-ideological lines. Surveys from the previous decades have
shown that there is no radical or Marxist feminist movement in Malaysia. Instead, what it found
was that most Malaysian women (and perhaps a few men) embrace a moderate or liberal form of
feminism5. As we will see in the ensuing sections, the shape of feminist politics is molded in the cast
of historical and political circumstances. Although women’s liberation from oppression had been
the one perennial goal of the women’s and feminist movement in Malaysia since pre-independence,
its specific goals within politics, ending gender-based violence, and faith-based inequality have
witnessed shifts in emphasis across time. And as I will argue, the linguistic shape of feminist
discourse is also determined by these historical and political circumstances. There is considerable
literature on the development of the women’s and feminist movement in Malaysia. However,
language use in Malaysian feminist discourse has been given little attention by scholars. This
lacuna requires attention due to the highly political nature of language policy in Malaysia where
language use is linked with ethnicity, class, and at times with religion.

Three concerns with regards to the predominance of English in Malaysian feminist

activism that animate the discussion in this article are as follows: firstly, in what ways have
feminist activists working in English reclaimed the language and made feminist discourse in
English ‘Malaysian’? ; secondly, what are the barriers and opportunities in communicating feminist
discourse in languages other than English; and thirdly, to what extent are feminist theories
incorporated or applied in activism considering the linguistic fluency of its practitioners? As a
discussion on the use of English in Malaysian feminist activism, this article will first offer an
overview of the language policy in Malaysia and how it has influenced the linguistic landscape of
the local feminist discourse. This overview is followed by issues that have been constitutive of
Malaysian feminism since political independence and the ways certain such issues and a common
language have brought activists across different ethnic groups together.

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Previous authors have pointed out the lack of engagement in Malaysian women's
movement with feminist theory, citing the prioritization of working with women 'on the ground'
rather than a preoccupation with feminist theory6. However, this article will show that different
women's non-profit organizations (NGOs hereafter) do adopt feminist theory but selectively and at
varying levels. What this article will also demonstrate is the extent of feminist theory's relevance as
a guiding principle in Malaysian feminist activism and what its political implications are for
feminist discourse in Malaysia as a whole. Adoption of feminist theory can be seen as one of the
factors indicating the intellectualization of Malaysian feminist discourse. The language used for
feminist theory in turn indicates the language associated with the intellectualization of Malaysian
feminist discourse. The term 'feminist discourse' in the Malaysian context used in this article is a
broad discursive category that takes into account western feminist frameworks and concepts and
international women's and human rights discourse but applied in local cultural circumstances.

The uneasy embrace: English language in Malaysia

Language is a sensitive political issue in Malaysia closely intertwined with ethnicity and
culture. As a nation home to 184 ethnic groups and their respective languages and cultural
traditions7, the balance of diversity and national cohesion through language is a delicate one. Over
half of the Malaysian population is represented by the Malays, followed by Chinese and Indian
Malaysians. As a postcolonial nation liberated from British rule, Malaysia has retained the
dominance of English in its language policy despite a few changes in language policy producing
bilingual and multilingual citizens with some whose first language is English. In the ensuing years
after 1957, Malaysia first introduced Bahasa Melayu as the national language in an attempt of
superseding the dominance of English and establishing a national identity through a drastic change
in language policy. From being the medium of educational instruction during colonialism, English
was reduced to being taught as a second language in schools. In rural areas where there is little to
no exposure to the English language other than an often sub-standard school English lessons,
English is perceived as a foreign language8.

The impulse behind the change in language policy in the early years of postcolonial
Malaysia was spurred by the recognition of the link between medium of instruction in schools and
socio-economic mobility. English language schools were primarily located in urban areas attended
by non-Malays and a few Malays from upper middle class backgrounds. English-medium education
was, in the preceding years before independence, associated with an “identification of a racial
group with a particular type of vocation or industry and hence its identification with wealth or
poverty”9. Legally establishing Malay as the national language would offer the historically
disadvantaged Malays the educational and administrative capital upon which to develop
themselves as largest ethnic group. There was little room for resistance by non-Malays against
such a cultural and linguistic imposition: the introduction of Malay as the national language was
used as a bargaining tool for the acquisition of national citizenship of non-Malays who arrived in
British Malaya for trade and colonial-led development10. However, despite its status as the national
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language of Malaysia and the creation of a state-run institution dedicated to its advancement, the
Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (Institute for Language and Literature), the Malaysian language
continued to provide fewer social and global economic opportunities than the English language in
the post-independence period. The use of Malay and English is unevenly distributed across the
public and private sectors, with English dominating the latter. Despite the huge efforts by the
Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka in introducing new technological words in the 1980s, translation of
books into Malay from other languages had since been a slow process11. Responding to the
economic shifts towards a knowledge-based economy in the 1990s, the national language policy
switched to a wider use of English particularly in science and technology by the early 2000s,
destabilizing the usage of Malay for technological and economical purposes. While there were no
attempts to displace Malay as the national language, the rhetoric of language as constitutive of
national identity had to compete (often unsuccessfully) with capitalist demands that position
English as a global language of economic opportunity.

Widely spoken especially in urban areas, English is used as a strategic and convenient
medium to communicate women's rights and feminist ideas and the discourse of human rights. The
rise of English as a primary medium of Malaysian public and intellectual discourse has partly also
been a product of the Malaysian state government's embrace of globalization in the 1990s12.
English as the language of academia had been promoted by the Malaysian government in 1994 and
1995 to improve the intellectual and institutional standards of universities. Malaysian feminist
activism can be seen as participating in a public and intellectual discourse that was impacted by
globalization and state initiatives to boost Malaysia’s knowledge-based economy. A mention on the
external forces that influence the increasing take-up of English is pertinent here. Globalization of
English, characterized by, inter alia, the dominance of English in global media networks and
international communities, entails challenges and opportunities for contemporary Malaysia. But
far from ideologically neutral, globalized English comes pre-packaged with new forms of political
and cultural baggage. Moreover, the globalization of the English language is more a reflection of the
economically driven hegemony than the geographic spread of speakers across the globe. Thus the
predominance of English in twenty-first century Malaysia continues to grow through the
prioritization of English in higher education, explosion of English language courses and imported
mass media from the United States, Britain, and Australia.

The discursive trajectory of feminism in Malaysia

The earliest calls for feminist emancipation emerged during the turn of the twentieth
century. Inspired by Muslim reformers during their studies in Cairo, Syed Syeikh Al-Hadi and
Zainal Abidin Ahmad, better known as Za’ba, were Malay male intellectuals whose writings on
women’s liberation began the stirrings of emancipation of Malay people not only on gender-
oriented terms, but against colonialism. Their writings appeared in Malay journals such as al-
Ikhwan (1926-1931) and Saudara (1928-1941), publications that were heavily influenced by
Egyptian modernist magazines13. Women played an important role in agitating Malaysia's political
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independence from the British in 1957 but their participation had been oriented towards
nationalist sovereignty rather than personal autonomy14. Basic rights conferred to all citizens such
as voting and equality before civil law were easily won as they were enshrined in the country's
Constitution at the time of independence. There were active women’s anti-colonial organizations
but nearly all were divided along ethnic and ideological lines15: Malay women fought for political
liberation under the banner of male-dominated anti-imperialist nationalist Malay parties,
immigrant women of Indian ancestry fought for the anti-colonial cause in India while immigrant
women of Chinese ancestry aligned themselves with anarchist parties, local communist parties,
and the political cause in China.

In the early decades after independence, women’s political organizing continued to be a

reflection of the prevailing ethnicity-based sectarian politics. Even when issues regarding equal
pay and female representation in politics were debated nationally, the leadership structures of
such campaigns were divided by ethnicity and by effect, language. It was through the emergence of
autonomous and semi-autonomous women's NGOs16 in the 1980s that a feminist and consciously
non-sectarian organizing amongst women formally took root17. The first women’s NGOs devoted
themselves to functioning as a shelter for women from domestic abuse and as a site for counseling,
legal assistance, and advocacy. Gender-based violence became an issue that may have found
universal support across ethnic and religious lines seeing as all women were potential victims of
violence, but it was a campaign dominated by non-Malay and middle-class urban-based women in
which English played a cohesive role. During this phase of the movement, the notion of ‘feminism’
took up a more radical and highly politicized form as it meant aligning with a human rights
discourse and pressuring for legal reform as a separate political lobby rather than part of a larger
male-dominated organizational structure - contemporary Malaysian feminist activism in English
can be seen as originating from this point in history.

By the 2000s, efforts to campaign against gender-based violence found support across all
women's organizations, whether they were aligned with the state, Islamic feminist, or were liberal
feminists18. Since its initial discourse on Violence against Women as the main cause for feminist
organizing in the 1980s, Malaysian feminism discourse has shifted to Gender-based Violence which
takes into account men who are also victims of abuse and violence. At present, Malaysian feminist
activists have appropriated western feminist discourse on rape by emphasizing notions of consent
and shifting the attention away women's responsibility to prevent sexual violence. A reworking of
the radical feminist concept of 'rape culture' is a new entrant into the Malaysian feminist discourse
as it is enunciated in official statements issued by women’s organizations. Rape culture is
understood by Malaysian feminists as a cultural continuum that normalizes the treatment of
women as sexual objects and trivialization of rape and sexual assault19. These are but a few
indicators that some Western feminist concepts are continually absorbed into local feminist
discourse to correspond with local concerns. Trends in the adoption of concepts show that
Malaysian feminist discourse is sensitive and responsive to the development of feminist theory
originating primarily from the West.

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In Malaysia, feminist political demands are in constant tension with an increasingly

conservative federal government. By implication, feminist and women NGOs have experienced
numerous obstacles in public policy-making throughout the decades in their engagement with the
state. Moreover, the growing conservatism of Islamic policies in predominantly Muslim Malaysia
since the 1990s in particular have created a socio-political climate that was hostile to Muslim
women 20 21 22. This is not to say that women were completely powerless and not actively
instrumental to the Islamisation of public life in Malaysia. Rather, highly educated and socially
mobile young Muslim women participated in both practical and symbolic ways23 to assert a new
Islamic identity in support of the Islamic resurgence24. It was during this period of Islamisation
across Malaysia when feminist politics began to focus on mitigating sexist policies emboldened by
state Islam. At the forefront of challenging faith-based patriarchal legal structures is the prominent
feminist organization for Muslim women, Sisters in Islam (SIS). Since its founding in 1993, SIS has
been a main centre of legal recourse for Muslim women and an advocate for legal reform along
Islamic feminist lines. Islamic feminism in Malaysia adopts the fundamental liberal feminist value
of rights but through a pro-women interpretation of Islamic sacred texts. Proponents of Islamic
feminism in Malaysia challenge the patriarchal versions of Sharia family and personal laws and
seek to reform them through the principle of ijtihad (reasoning) and ijma' (reaching a decision by
consensus) 25 26. All issues related to the well-being of Muslim women in Malaysia have fallen under
the purview of SIS although in recent years, polygamy, moral policing, and underage marriage have
become the primary sites of contestations between SIS and Malaysian religious authorities.

The shape of Malaysian feminist discourse is both facilitated and hindered by its
ambivalent relationship with the state. Interested in women's votes, the present Malaysian
government can make concessions to the demands of feminist NGOs. But the government has at
times been embroiled in a power struggle for political legitimacy with the country's biggest Islamic
party, Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (The Pan-Islamic Malaysian Party, PAS) and the Oppositional
coalition of which PAS is a coalition member - a power struggle that impacts on gender and
sexuality policies. In an attempt to also win over the majority Malay-Muslim electorate, a
constituent influenced by decades of Islamisation of public life, the Malaysian government has
inserted conservative Islamic demands to various gender-oriented legislation and international
conventions27. The result of such a political compromise has been the unsatisfactory introduction
and reform of public policies and laws that do not fulfill their egalitarian goals.

The issues in Malaysian feminist discourse outlined above have emerged as both resistance to and
opportunities for action opened up by the prevailing politics of the times. Despite showing
tendencies in political organizing along ethnic and linguistic lines, gender-based violence and
religious issues have become sites of feminist contestation around which feminists of all
persuasions and ethnic/religious background unite in a predominantly English voice.

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Method and site of study

The site of the study are three women’s organizations based in Petaling Jaya out of six
women’s organizations in Peninsular Malaysia that function simultaneously as advocacy centers
and shelters for women and their children. Petaling Jaya is one of the most populated and
industrialized cities in Malaysia. Originally developed as a satellite township of Kuala Lumpur, it is
home to 55% ethnic Chinese Malaysians, 30% Malays, and 13% Indian Malaysians28. This study,
conducted between November 2012 and February 2013, utilizes a qualitative approach,
foregrounding the voices and experiences of Malaysian female and male feminist activists who are
either still working or previous members of feminist NGOs in Peninsular Malaysia. Four middle-
class feminist activists of different ethnic backgrounds were first interacted in person to build
rapport and later interviewed via email correspondence in their preferred language, English, on
issues relating to the use of English in activism, the challenges in using other Malaysian languages,
and the relevance of feminist theory in their work. Although the sample is very small, as key
members and former long-serving members of their organization, their insights acutely represent
not only their own personal experiences as long-time members but the prevailing culture of their
organizations.

The dominance of English in Malaysian feminist activism and its implication on the use of
feminist theory

The 'hegemony' of the English language in feminist discourse and its imposition on non-
Anglophone feminism has been addressed by a few authors29 30. At the centre of such critiques is
the rendering of non-English feminist discourse and its subjects, especially those produced in non-
Western contexts, as ‘other’31. But this is not to say that non-Anglophone feminists who use English
to express feminist discourse are engaging in self-effacing politics. In a study by McMahill (2001),
Japanese women in feminist English classes deploy English as an access to alternative gender
ideologies and feminist ideas in ways that empower them. This is because the women find the
inherent structure of the Japanese language oppressive against women and that English not only
less hierarchical but widely seen as associated with feminism32. To mitigate the dominance of
Anglophone feminism, Descarries suggests finding “ways of establishing a better inter-linguistic
communication in feminist studies in order to encompass our historical, cultural, spatial and
linguistic ways of being feminists and thinking feminism, alleviate the tensions of a privileged
linguistic hegemony and leave room for the absence of consensus while remaining in complete
solidarity”33. The ensuing section of this article explores the possibilities in Malaysian feminist
activisms that address the foregoing suggestion.

At present, most campaigning materials and local publications on feminism, gender and
sexuality available in Malaysia are in English. The preponderance of English in Malaysian feminist
activism may be a reflection of linguistic backgrounds of its propagators in activism and academia.
Present-day feminisms in Malaysia arise from the work of activists who organize from women's

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centers set up in cities throughout Peninsular and East Malaysia by women of urban and middle-
class origins. Since the 1990s, there has been a gradual 'intellectualization' of women's movements
in Malaysia, particularly in Muslim women's groups. Female academics, lawyers, writers, artists,
and journalists became members of feminist NGOs during this period, particularly in Muslim
feminist groups 34. However, the over-representation of urban middle-class women and men in
feminist activism in Malaysia marginalizes the concerns of working class women whose issues are
not usually expressed in fluent English (for a discussion on the historical challenges in working
with rural and working class women, see Ng, Mohamad, and Tan (2006)). The difficulty of
reconciling class subjectivities and feminist academia has been discussed by a number of feminist
academics35. However, there is to date little to no rigorous discussion on the connection between
class subjectivities and feminist identification in Malaysia and its impact on activism.

Despite the imbalance of feminist discourse in English in Malaysia, it is not an indication

that Malaysians who engage with media in languages other than English are not interested in
issues related to feminism and women's rights. The main issue connected with the predominance
of English in feminist discourse is access to feminist knowledge at large. Most of the textual
material on feminism outside the realm of activism in the form of books and popular articles in the
media available to the reading public are mainly in English. Unlike in Indonesia, where many books
on feminism are translated from English into the Indonesian language, feminist books in Malaysia
are available in book shops and libraries in their original language i.e. mostly in English. Reina*,
who works as a program officer in the Women’s Aid Organization (WAO), argues that the lack of
access to feminist discourse in languages other than English is compounded further by the
difficulty on the part of feminist NGOs in getting a slot on non-English radio stations and
opportunities to publish in non-English language newspapers. In contrast, there are many
opportunities for the publication of official statements and interviews with feminist activists in
English language newspapers and on radio respectively.

The heavy use of English in feminist discourse has however allowed a relatively easy
adoption (and at times critical rejection) of feminist theory in the organizational structure of NGOs.
But in Malaysia, as elsewhere, there is recognition that there is rarely a perfect fit between theory
and practice36. There are other reasons that make feminist theory less congruent to the needs and
lived experiences of Malaysian women. Dominant Western feminist theory has been unfairly
criticized by activists alike on the grounds of being Eurocentric, middle-class, cis-centric, hetero-
normative, and largely neglectful non-White and non-Western experiences while at the same time
ignoring the rich sometimes under-emphasized history of feminist struggles by non-Western
women across ethnic, religious, and class lines. However, a critical assessment of Western feminist
theory does not effect in a phasing out theory from activism altogether. Rather, the feminist
critique of patriarchy in the structural oppression of women is the foundational framework to
understanding the prevalence of violence against women in all feminist and women's NGOs in the
country. But there is a sense that a Western-derived theory of patriarchy is adopted as vessels into
which the experiences of local women are ‘poured’ in. The development of local theories that better
reflect the lived experiences of Malaysian women very rarely employed as frameworks of analysis

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by activists. These theories have been developed by sociologists and anthropologists of gender
relations in Malaysia whose work are often positioned within the peripheries of the (Western)
feminist ‘canon’.

Gatri, a former activist of a feminist NGO, found that many feminist activists who had
worked with her in Malaysia have a working knowledge of Western feminist theory. Those who did
not have such a background understood gender-based inequality in two ways: the structural
permeation of patriarchy and the gendered hierarchy of power - men asserting their dominance
over women. However, an understanding of how gender-related injustice intersects with other
social categories such as class, sexuality, and (dis)abilities are rarely considered. Reina of WAO
concurs with Gatri's assertion of feminist theory's relevance in their activism. At WAO, feminist
theory guides the women's group's work but the biggest source of inspiration and information for
the organization are the lived realities of women they assist and campaign for. Kimberlé
Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality is applied in WAO for developing an analytical framework
around issues concerning domestic violence in Malaysia. Intersectionality is the point of contact or
'crossroads' made between social categories37. Intersectional analysis recasts sexism as a form of
oppression that is not based solely on gender and urges feminists to extend their energies to
studying other power dimensions such as class, race, and sexuality particularly in the neglected
social locations in which two (or more) of these dimensions intersect38.

In the context of Islamic feminism in Malaysia, Quranic texts, hadiths, and feminist
scholarship in Islam are core materials for activists working within the organization. According to
one activist at SIS, Sarinah*, the founding of SIS had been based on a Muslim feminist orientation.
Although there is an immediate engagement with texts from the Quran, hadith and sunnah (acts
and sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad respectively), activists at SIS employ what they
understood as ‘Western Second Wave feminism’ as a framework to understand the impact of
patriarchy on Muslim gender relations. Most of the feminist jargon used in SIS's activism is in
English, although there is material on feminism, gender, and sexuality in the Malay language.
Technical concepts in Western feminist theory are applied in research on Muslim women in
Malaysia or as Sarinah asserts are 'transcended', by making Muslim women's lived experiences as
the main points of reference. SIS organizes regular 'study sessions' during which local and
international academics present their research findings and conduct group discussions on new
methods and insight into scholarship on Islam and gender. Such sessions are usually open by
invitation to interested parties outside of SIS and usually conducted in English.

But not all activists agree that feminist theory is engaged critically within their NGO. For
Ellie*, a former activist at All Women's Action Society (AWAM), feminism is promoted
‘superficially’ by AWAM as a women-centric concept employed in advocacy work for the improved
status and rights of women. At AWAM, training, campaign materials, and publications tend to be
‘theory and analysis-lite’ according to Ellie. Despite its role in the shift from the campaigning
discourse of 'Violence Against Women' to 'Gender-based Violence' to presumably considers men as
victims, the feminist perspective at AWAM still focuses on women only and have yet to provide
counseling services to transgender individuals and men who suffer from gender-based violence.
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Ellie asserts that an impediment to a holistic activism may be attributed to the lack of a theoretical
framework as a vantage point from which to view 'the bigger picture' of gender-based oppression.
Although a number of individual activists within AWAM are versed in Western feminist and queer
theory, the knowledge and application of theory do not translate into its incorporation into the
training, official campaigning material and statements. The relative influence of feminist theory in
Malaysian feminist activism may be a reflection of the unequal power structures within feminist
knowledge production on the transnational level. The asymmetrical relationship between who
theorizes and who is theorized is a reflection of the inequality that exists in the global economic
order and the privileged status universities in the West have both in terms of resources and
epistemological authority39. It comes to no surprise then that activists in so-called developing
nations have an ambivalent position towards feminist theories that bear no resemblance to their
experiences, branding them Eurocentric or simply 'alien'.

Lack of financial resources and time on the part of activists may be related to the
difficulty in engaging with feminist theory more deeply much less opportunities to develop theory.
Based on Gatri's experiences in working in feminist NGOs in Malaysia, time devoted to meetings
with other NGOs and the workload expected of staff members squeezed out a lot of time for
theoretical reflection. Some feminist NGOs face a problem with lack of funding from local and
international donors for the training and field research of their staff. Inevitably, lack of financial
resources translates to fewer appointments of new members of staff to manage various projects
and administrative responsibilities. Internal constraints, along with external ones via the
movement's unstable relationship with the state, constitute challenges to making expedient gains
for all women in need. An awareness of English's predominance in Malaysian feminist activism has
resulted in the concerted effort by NGOs to producing official publications and other campaigning
materials in all the main languages of Malaysia: Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. However, these efforts
have some time to go before decentering the hegemony of English in Malaysian feminist discourse
and de-link feminist issues from middle-class concerns.

There are a variety of other issues that can further refine an analysis of the feminist
women's movement in Malaysia as a way of developing a keen perspective on its successes and
setbacks over the years. Such issues include the members’ behind the feminist NGOs class and
educational background impact on the intellectual and legal discourse in Malaysia. There are
Gender Studies programs in universities throughout Malaysia taught in both English and Malay,
and the interest has certainly grown in the last decade. Continued and sustained collaboration
between feminist academics and activists can contribute greatly to the production of locally
grounded feminist knowledge and increase the impact of Malaysian feminism on mainstream
scholarship. There is much value in allocating time for academic study sessions to update activists
on the current theoretical trends. However, lack of time and energy on the part of busy activists
means that theory should be incorporated directly into the nine to five work schedule of social
workers, counselors, and officers rather than outside of weekly working hours.

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Concluding remarks

English has long been the lingua franca of the urban and elite middle classes of all the
main ethnic groups prior to the inception of Malaysia as a country. Changes in language policy and
inconsistent development of the national language have resulted in continued dominance of
English in Malaysia. This means that much of intellectual discourse, feminism included, is largely
the preserve of the urban middle classes. Even then, the application and development of theory
have not always been the priority in the advocacy work of Malaysian feminist NGOs. Meanwhile,
the knowledge produced through the experiences of many social workers and counselors who
were working class and have minimal background in western feminist theory are also taken as
contributors to the discourse. In fact, their experiences and subjectivities as the site of knowledge
production particularly of what it means to be a woman can form the basis of feminist standpoint
epistemology. Furthermore, the use of English in feminist activism facilitates the entry of Malaysian
feminists and their concerns into in the transnational feminist 'community'. Linguistic barriers, just
as much as unequal economic barriers, have been one of the limitations in the forming successful
transnational feminist connections40. Another advantage of the use of English for communicating
feminist discourse is that English has become a common linguistic site in Malaysia's ethnically and
linguistically fragmented society.

* All names of activists are pseudonyms.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Clarissa Lee and the activists of Sisters in Islam, AWAM, and WAO.

Notes

1. Rohana Ariffin, “Feminism in Malaysia: A Historical and Present Perspective of Women's

Struggles in Malaysia”, Women's Studies International Forum 22 (1999): 417.
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2. Ariffin, “Feminism in Malaysia”, 473.

3. Cecilia Ng, Maznah Mohamad, and Tan Beng Hui, Feminism and the Women's Movement in
Malaysia: An Unsung (R)evolution (Oxford: Routledge, 2006), 1.

4. Ng, Mohamad, and Tan, Feminism and the Women's Movement in Malaysia, 1.

5. Shymala Nagarajah, Malaysian women today, (Kuala Lumpur: Women's Affairs Division,
1995) quoted in Ariffin, “Feminism in Malaysia”, 421.

6. Virginia H. Dancz, Women in party politics in Peninsular Malaysia, (Singapore: Oxford

University Press, 1987) quoted in Ariffin, “Feminism in Malaysi”, 417.

7. The Joshua Project, 2012. http://www.joshuaproject.net, Accessed on 15 February 2013.

8. Saran Kaur Gill, “Language Policy in Malaysia: Reversing Direction”, Language Policy 4
(2005): 244.

9. Asmah Hj Omar Malay in its sociocultural context. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan
Pustaka. 1987: 63

10. Gill, “Language Policy in Malaysia: Reversing Direction”, 246

11. Gill, “Language Policy in Malaysia: Reversing Direction”, 252

12. Sumit K. Mandal, “Reconsidering Cultural Globaliaation: The English Language in Malaysia”,
Third World Quarterly, 21 (2000), 1002.

13. Zanariah Noor. Gender Justice and Islamic Family Law Reform in Malaysia, Kajian Malaysia,
Vol. XXV, No. 2, 2007: 128.

14. Ng, Mohamad, and Tan, Feminism and the Women's Movement in Malaysia, 39

15. Ng, Mohamad, and Tan, Feminism and the Women's Movement in Malaysia, 40

16. Some women's organizations in Malaysia saw an importance in engaging with the state
especially with regards to the demands for legislative change around Violence Against Women
(VAW) in the 1980s.Their ideological stance on feminism was 'immaterial' as they needed to some
extend de-radicalize when writing memorandums to authorities in order to not appear militant or
extreme.

17. Ng, Mohamad, and Tan, Feminism and the Women's Movement in Malaysia, 69.

18. Ng, Mohamad, and Tan, Feminism and the Women's Movement in Malaysia, 101.

19. Dianne F. Herman, “The rape culture”, in Women: A Feminist Perspective, ed. Jo Freeman,
(Berkshire: MacGraw-Hill, 1994), 45.

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 13 | Page

20. Zainah Anwar, “What Islam, Whose Islam? : Sisters in Islam and the struggle for women's
rights”, in The Politics of Multiculturalism: Pluralism and Citizenship in Malaysia, ed. Robert W.
Hefner, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), 227.

21. Rebecca Foley, “Muslim Women's Challenge To Islamic Law: The Case of Malaysia,
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 6 (2004), 56.

22. Julian C. H. Lee, Islamization and Activism in Malaysia, Singapore: Institute of Southeast
Asia Studies, 2010), 3.

23. The wearing of the veil or tudung became a political marker of resistance to the
'establishment' Islam of the time. 'Establishment' Islam, considered moderate but reactionary by
Islamic political parties, was represented by the Malay-Muslim governing political party, United
Malays National Organisation (UMNO).

24. Ng, Mohamad, and Tan, Feminism and the Women's Movement in Malaysia, 85-86.

25. Anwar, “What Islam, Whose Islam?”, 231.

26. Yasmin Moll, “People like us” in pursuit of God and rights: Islamic feminist discourse and
Sisters in Islam in Malaysia, Journal of International Women's Studies, 11 (2009), 45-50.

27. Ng, Mohamad, and Tan, Feminism and the Women's Movement in Malaysia, 100.

28. Total population by ethnic group, Local Authority area and state, Malaysia, 2010,
http://www.statistics.gov.my, Accessed on the 28th May 2013.

29. Winter, Bronwyn, ‘(Mis)representations: What French Feminism Isn’t’, Women’s Studies
International Forum 20 1997.

30. Francine Descarries, The Hegemony of the English Language in the Academy: The
Damaging Impact of the Sociocultural and Linguistic Barriers on the Development of Feminist
Sociological Knowledge, Theories, and Strategies, Current Sociology, (2003):

31. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Under Western Eyes: Revisited, in Feminism without borders,
Durham: Duke University Press. 2006.

32. Cheiron McMahill. 'Self-Expression, Gender and Community: A Japanese Feminist English
Class', in Multilingualism, Second Language Learning, and Gender, edited by Aneta Pavlenko, Adrian
Blackledge, Ingrid Piller, Marya Teutsch-Dwyer 2001: 310

33. Descarries, “The Hegemony of the English Language in the Academy”, 630.

34. Ariffin, “Feminism in Malaysia”, 421.

35. Dianne Reay, “The Double-Bind of the 'Working-Class' Feminist Academic: The Success of
Failure and the Failure of Success' in Class Matters: “Working Class” Women's Perspectives On
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 14 | Page

Social Class, ed. Christine Zmroczek (London: Taylor and Francis, 1997), 19-20.

36. Foley, “Muslim Women's Challenge To Islamic Law”, 55.

37. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence
against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review, 43 (1991), 1245.

38. Leslie McCall, “The complexity of intersectionality”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
Society, 30 (2005), 1551.

39. Manuh, “Doing Gender Work in Ghana”, 142.

40. Vera Mackie, “The Language of Globalization, Transnationality, and Feminism”,

International Feminist Journal of Politics, 3 (2001), 197.

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