YOURSAY | ‘Leadership growth has to be organic and not forced.’

Enact law to ensure 30pct Dewan seats reserved for women – Harapan leader

Proarte: Women can excel in any field of human endeavour. In these unthinking and fascistic “woke” eras, the assumption there is discrimination if women are not represented in the same numbers as men is wrong.

Ideally, there should be equal representation, but to achieve this requires going through an evolutionary process.

What is important is that there are no impediments in the way of women's progress. If their numbers fall short, we must ask ourselves why.

Perhaps the psychological makeup of women is what makes them less attracted to becoming MPs.

There could be a whole host of reasons for this - including cultural, religious and educational.

Once we start talking about quotas and special privileges for women, then it would be a sure way to create a sense of entitlement, and mediocrity will surely be the result.

The people deserve better. We must try to understand why women do not seem to like the profession of being an MP for reasons which remain unclear.

These must be identified, and if there are any discriminatory elements, then they must be addressed. The culture of entitlement is dangerous and does not bring out the best in us and is also discriminatory, which is what having quotas engenders.

It is also important to recognise that men and women, boys and girls are different and thank goodness for that. The obsession for equality in numbers can be counter-productive.

If we create a numbers game culture, we could be suppressing individual talent and growth.

How would women feel if universities had a policy of equalising the number of men and women entering any particular course?

The science and medical fields in public universities are overrepresented by women - up to 70 percent in some cases.

Should there be changes in the law to make sure men are not underrepresented? See where this is going? What about football teams? Should women be represented in equal numbers as men in all the teams?

What would that do to the overall performance? Are we willing to sacrifice sporting excellence for the sake of numbers?

Let meritocracy guide our path to progress and there should be no discrimination or racism along the way.

Undecided: Although there is a need to have a higher proportion of women MPs, providing a legal gender quota may not be a good solution.

Maybe there are just not enough women going into politics.

However, Pakatan Harapan Women’s chief Aiman Athirah Sabu's suggestion for the government to give additional resources to strengthen the women's wing of all political parties is a good way to attract more women into politics.

With time, there will be a bigger pool of women to select from as candidates.

Darmakochi: Nice to hear but not fair to the voters in any constituency.

The candidates must be based on the support of the voters in that constituency.

Before any general elections, all aspiring candidates from any party must get closer to the people and develop a positive relationship.

The party leadership must gauge this properly and fairly when selecting any particular candidate for any constituency.

Righteousness4all: Aiman’s take on this issue is “so shallow” and lacks maturity. I am so surprised that such a statement came from Harapan’s women’s wing chief.

We voters expect you to create platforms from within the Harapan parties for potential women candidates within the parties taking the lead on various projects or service centres.

These platforms will allow leaders the opportunity to groom and identify potential quality members to move up the ladder.

These candidates can stand for election at the branch, division and state level.

They can start as assistants to stage assemblypersons and MPs before moving on to become councillors, state assemblypersons or MPs themselves.

You cannot "set" a quota or parachute members to contest as an assemblyperson or MP.

Not more awarding party members or bypassing loyal members by bringing in outsiders to stand for election.

The bottom line is that parties must select quality candidates who are knowledgeable, educated, friendly, pleasant and have no baggage before considering recommending them to be a candidate.

GrayParrot9290: Gender equality? Yes, but it must also be based on meritocracy and ministry should be helmed by technocrats and not politicians.

The people do not decide purely on the government of the day.

VoteOfOne: The right to a seat in the august house based on one's skin colour, race, religion, aristocracy or common, and now gender.

These are the recycled entitlements politicians want to compensate for. When was the last time we heard any of these ask that their constituents' voices be represented?

Dummies Dhimmi: Just choose the best, brightest, incorruptible, neutral candidate serving all people. Don’t genderise the representative who serves the people.

Quigonbond: Less asking for a change of law to do this, and more of doing this within the parties first.

Leadership growth has to be organic and not forced.

R Venugopal: Our nation always talks about a quota system for their benefit. Let us all talk about merit and performance before we select anyone.

Only then can we see the best people holding the right position in running the nation.

HJ Angus: There's no law that women are limited to 30 percent of parliamentary seats. So why place such restrictions?

Also, women have a slightly larger population than men, so you already have more voters.

All it requires is more strategic thinking and better planning.

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