Gender equality and women empowerment / Dr. Jamaluddin Aziz

The term gender equality is usually seen as synonymous with women’s empowerment. This is rather inevitable as the struggle for gender equality is traceable in the history of women’s movement and empowerment.In Malaysia, the task of promoting gender equality as a vision and mission of the country’s development project has been shouldered by the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development (henceforth KPWKM). Throughout the year, KPWKM has been focusing on empowering women in all areas of life, particularly in politics and economy. The formulation of the National Policy on Women and its ensuing Action Plan is the epitome of this effort. In addition, Gender Mainstreaming has been employed, albeit rather flighty, as KPWKM’s strategy to achieve gender equality. However, in contemporary Malaysian context, the link between gender equality and women’s empowerment has turned into a stigma that belies the importance of this development mission. This is due to several reasons; nonetheless,using my personal narrative as the first gender expert of KPWKM as a method of analysis, this paper presentation seeks to address one of the reasons, that is, the dissemination of information about gender equality and women’s empowerment. I argue that the inconsistency and lack of strategy in the Ministry’s effort to strategically promote gender equality and women’s empowerment is a course for concern.