KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 23 ― Wanita MCA challenged Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia's (Isma) female activists today to quit their jobs and become full-time homemakers, saying they may as well become full advocates of the Taliban way of life where women are deprived of schooling and education.
In a statement here, Wanita MCA chief Datuk Heng Seai Kie questioned the rationale behind statements made by two female Isma leaders who claimed that women are biologically programmed to stay at home and raise children.
Heng pointed out that the duo ― Dr Nur Farrah Nadia and Dr Fatimah Zaharah Rosli ― are both medical practitioners in their own right, and that their opinions on gender roles are insulting to their fellow womenfolk.
“Both female medical practitioners must reveal what form of research they or ISMA undertook and evidence gathered to declare like as if women are biologically and instinctively emotional and thus, should be jobless and confined to the domestic sphere of raising children,” the Wanita MCA politician said.
“Are both Dr Nur Farrah and Dr Fatimah admitting that they are hormonally, with the DNA and emotions, meant to be domestically-bound and that their long hours to obtain their medical degrees were a mistake?” she asked.
Heng added that for any marriage to succeed, household chores and the raising of children are duties that both the husband and wife should share.
Isma's contention, she added, only provides justification for husbands and fathers to slack in their duties to the family.
The politician also asked if the Malay rights group's opinion on the matter is part of a larger plan for Malaysia to return to feudal days where, for the maintenance of power and authority, the masses are kept backwards, ignorant and uneducated.
“Are these Isma women and Isma... attempting to regress the women masses while placing themselves at the peak of the pyramid to cause other females to be dependent on them as the authority for shreds of information?
“Why not Isma just follow in the footsteps of the Taliban and completely advocate the prohibition and deprivation of schooling, education and knowledge for women? Such a scenario will see more women talent and skills departure from Malaysia,” Heng said.
To prove they believe their own ideals, Heng challenged all Isma female activists to leave their jobs and become homemakers, and to be entirely financially dependent on their respective husbands.
“Besides that, I am equally curious as to which university they had obtained their tertiary education from in order for them to become so-called 'doctors'?” she asked.
Yesterday, Dr Fatimah said that women can best contribute to nation-building efforts by carrying out the task for which they have been physiologically assigned, which is to stay at home and raise children.
In the controversy that has engulfed her Isma colleague Dr Nur Farrah, Dr Fatimah argued that women played a “more vital” role as a mother and homemaker than anything they could possibly achieve outside as they have the “hormones, the DNA, the emotions” to do so even as she acknowledged that more men were becoming increasingly “domesticated” and taking on the roles previously assigned to the other gender.
“I am a wife first, then a mother, then a daughter, and then a doctor,” she said in a statement, singling out DAP politician Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud and social activist Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir as examples of detractors of this philosophy who are “undermining” women who have committed themselves to being housewives and mothers.
Last Thursday, Dr Nur Farrah who heads Isma's family and society bureau, argued that Malaysia can still be a high-income nation if its men remain the main breadwinners and its women focused on raising children, amid concerns over the effect of youth marriages on the economy.
“A high income nation must not rely on women as the major contributor, but rather men should lead the workforce and put their biggest effort in shaping the nation,” she wrote on the group’s website.
“Our females need to be highly educated in various skills to bring up healthy, successful girls and boys and must contribute to the community in a way that best suits them,” she added, without elaborating further.
Citing the Wall Street Journal, Dr Nur Farrah listed Japan as an example of a successful nation with low involvement of women in the workforce, making up about 40 per cent of the workforce and only 1.2 per cent of board members in major corporations.
