The productive and non-(Re) productive women: Sites of economic growth in Malaysia

• Main Author: Thambiah, S.
• Format: Article
• Published: Sookmyung Womens Univ 2010
• Subjects: H Social Sciences (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.um.edu.my/13310/

This paper is a critical revisit of the New Economic Policy and the New Population Policy of Malaysia. It attempts to inspect how a woman's body (fertility) and her labor has been the site or location from which the economic growth of the country was dependent on but has never been recognized. The paper examines women's contribution in the economy and their contribution to the economic growth of Malaysia. These contributions and changes were plotted against the changes in the policy domain with a focus on the New Economic Policy (NEP) and the New Population Policy (NPP) to see if there was any relationship between them. The paper also discusses that women have not always responded in line with policy calls especially in relation to their fertility but they have contributed significantly in the structural changes of the Malaysian economy. These responses are examined as a form of gender struggle within a fragmented and contradictory policy domain and within the context of very little gender equity/equality concerns in society and the policy domain. How these responses contributed in real terms to economic development and the overall growth of the country but with insignificant distributive dim for women contrary to the New Economic Policy's claim is critically analyzed in this paper.