Leadership in the public sector: Examining women and minority groups in the Malaysian civil service

• Main Author: Mohamed, Ahmad Martadha
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: JA Political science (General)
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/13931/1/h.PDF; http://repo.uum.edu.my/13931/

A retrospective view of the government's policies with respect to equal employment opportunity shows a gradual transition from merely suggesting that government will integrate people from different gender and ethnicity into the workplace to taking proactive steps to increase the representation of women and minority groups in the civil service. However, ensuring a bureaucracy that mirrors the population it serves remains a daunting task. Some people have attributed at least some of the blame for the failure to achieve a fully representative civil service to inadequate support for such efforts by political leaders.Yet, in the context of Malaysia, it is the localization policy that is worthy of consideration that shows disproportionate numbers of women and minorities in the civil service as opposed to their number in the population.In addition, the perceived unequal chances in recruitment and career advancement as well as the low pay discourage the minorities' application in the bureaucracy.The important issue raised is whether there exists a case of unequal opportunities against women and minority groups in the civil service in Malaysia. Building upon this foundation, the paper argues that even if bureaucratic representativeness is an important tool for increasing government legitimacy, the structural, political and economic features of Malaysia have a bearing on the gender and minority representativeness of the civil service at the national and sub national levels.The paper then discusses the dearth of representative bureaucracy literature and places this literature within the historical context of Malaysia.The analysis finds that there are an increasing number of women and minority groups in all levels of government. It concludes by noting that more strategies and policy actions need to be taken to ensure that the notion of representative bureaucracy requires more than just passive representation but also active representation as well.