RECENTLY, Red FM conducted a video interview for FHM ‘s Girls Next Door competition. The video was, in my opinion, sexist and explicitly derogatory towards women. I have tried contacting both the radio station and the magazine but to no avail. I left comments on their YouTube and Facebook accounts, and even tried emailing the [...]

WOMEN’S rights activist Meera Samanther left legal practice in 1995, thinking she would have a short break after a difficult pregnancy. “I thought I would volunteer for a while, do some charity work,” she tells The Nut Graph. She started helping at the Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO)’s shelter and ended up becoming its president, actively advocating for [...]

THE phenomenon of indigenous women like the Penan being violated is not peculiar to Malaysia. Indeed, there are parallels in other countries, including a developed nation like the US. In their 2007 report, Maze of Injustice: The failure to protect indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA, Amnesty International (AI) reported that indigenous women [...]

Women’s rights logo (Public domain) ACCORDING to the Joint Action Group for Gender Equality (JAG), women in Malaysia have made little progress over the past 25 years. In a briefing for parliamentarians last week on 24 March, JAG listed out the good, the bad and the ugly that affect women. JAG’s research into the issues [...]

(Scroll by ba1969 / sxc.hu) ON 29 Jan 2010, Perak’s Barisan Nasional state executive councillor Datuk Hamidah Osman said female politicians cannot become menteri besar. Her reason: a menteri besar “has to meet the [monarch], where protocol is involved, and one has to meet religious officers … in such situations it is not possible for [...]

THE year 2009 has been a breathless one of political upheaval. But as we sift through the year’s events, we ask, which were the ones that really mattered? Which events indicate if democracy and political maturity are improving? Which tell us things are becoming worse? The Nut Graph offers its take on 10 highlights of [...]