Kanita:

Kanita! Kanita! (Kara Kara Vanita)!!! Or women and children. My research focus out here in Malaysia is on  maternal and child health, more specifically on reproductive health. This topic was very sensitivie, so the speaker sort of spoke around the deep root issues. So I was disappointed, but it is what it is. But her powerpoint for the program was beyond super! They were able to recruit me to join!! Too bad the PhD work here wouldn’t benefit me unless I stayed to fight for the Malay, which wouldn’t happen since I am an outsider to this country and more importantly, not Muslim. Take a look at their program.

• Cultural norms are still prevalent and gender equality is still not completely accepted
• GLIDE is motto: G(ender) L(ivelihood) I(n equality) D(evelopment) E(mpowerment) 
• 65% of women experience sexual harassment (35% of men & 51% of men in the private sector)
•  Sexuality and Sex is taboo!
• Legally Muslim girls can be married at 16 and males at 18… BUT A LOT of girls are married underaged
• Google: Musawah
• Sex Education is highly debatable
• Rejection of sex education by parents is common
• There was a movement by women to develop a program for the Women Center for Change “Good Touch, Bad Touch” – teaches children what is appropriate touch and what is not through a video
• Teens have “Respect” programs that discusses “touching” without sex education
• Child marriages are used to prevent out of wedlock children
• School exams are implications for girls social development: girls aged 15-17 that do not sit down for the career exams will not go to school and were probably raising children
• There are supposed to be “special” circumstances for underage marriages, but there is not a law, just the judges decision (if there is potential for premarital sex)
• It is culturally unacceptable to have children before marriage, but most girls do not continue their education after marrying
• Old polygamy law ~> marriage had to be just AND necessary in order to have more than one wife, but not it is just OR necessary
• Polygamy within the Quran was for that specific time and place. It also had limits
• Current Malay legislature promotes polygamy

INFORMM: Interesting indeed!! Their whole mission is to develop rapid tests for common tropical infectious diseases to treat them with rapid sustainable medicine. Since both of these programs were not expecting us, they were not prepared to lecture us. Other than those few things, that is all I took away from both of these lectures.

I did manage to snap a few pictures!!

Krystal

Krystal