Additional information about gender quotas

The percentage of women is calculated from the current number of seats occupied in the parliament. The House of Representatives has 223 statutory seats. The Senate has 70 statutory seats. 

"A focus on gender alone—to the exclusion of intersecting social categories such as ethnicity, socioeconomic and regional background—is not enough. For instance, there are very few women of Indian ethnicity active in Malaysian politics. DAP’sKasthuriraani Patto’s career was spurred by Malaysian Indian women activists like Irene Fernandez who were visible in the public sphere: ‘I could relate to them. We were [after all] minorities in this country. They were women who were put there because of the support of the people’, she recalled in her interview. many constituencies are remote and difficult to access. The nomination of party candidates remains a black box; there are no written rules and women are typically handpicked for strategic reasons. The legislation of minimum 30% women in the party’s selection committee and nominees can make the nomination process more transparent and accountable to a party’s commitment to 30% critical mass. At present, 130 countries have adopted constitutional, electoral or political party gender quotas and the average percentage of women’s political representation in countries that have adopted them is 24.9%.30 Malaysia should be on this list and can certainly benefit from joining it" (Izharuddin 2019).