Sustainable development through gender-responsive policy making

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A group photo of the delegation with the KAS contributors at the KAS headquarters in Berlin.

Equality is a universal human right, it drives sustainable development and serves to bring about real change in a society. Despite this, millions of women around the world are discriminated against in access to education, the labour market, health care, and in their daily lives. This underscores the urgency and importance of gender-responsive policymaking on the path to eliminating all forms of discrimination.

Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung supports projects worldwide to promote gender-responsive policymaking. This is also the case in Malaysia, where it explicitly aims to contribute solutions to challenges in inclusion and democratic representation and to support dialogue between politics and civil society. In Malaysia as well as in Germany, Belgium and the EU, the process of gender equality is far from being successfully completed.

In this dialogue programme, a Malaysian delegation with participants from government, parliament, civil society and the media - emphasising the whole-of-society approach to finding solutions - was invited to Brussels and Berlin to network with peers and exchange ideas on how to successfully advocate for gender-equitable policymaking.

The delegation’s study trip focused on strategic exchange on necessary reforms. An exchange of experiences on the development of interdepartmental gender equality strategies and the implementation of corresponding action plans to be facilitated. A joint exchange of best practices, e.g. on laws on needs-based financial budgeting and allocation in the public budget (gender-responsive budgeting) and on initiatives to strategically reduce the structural discrimination of women in the labor market and in labor laws, but also on equal participation of women and men in leadership positions, as well as on other essential cornerstones of a sustainable, inclusive gender equality policy, shall be enabled.

The delegation members from Malaysia were:

1. Ms. Lau Alice Kiong Yieng (Hon.), Deputy Speaker of the Malaysian National Parliament
2. Ms. Mas Ermieyati Samsudin (Hon.), Member of Parliament (Malaysian United Indigenous Party, BERSATU)
3. Mr. Chua Choon Hwa, Deputy Secretary General (Strategic) at the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development (MWFCD)
4. Ms. Punitha Silivarajoo (Dr.), Deputy Director General for Policy and Development at the Legal Affairs Division of the Prime Minister’s Department in the Division of Law and Institutional Reform
5. Ms. Ng Shy Ching (Sandrea), Member of the Perak State Legislative Assembly for Teja in Perak (People’s Justice Party, PKR)
6. Ms. Ummu Atiyah Binti Ahmad Zakuan (Prof. Dr.), Assoc. Professor and Lecturer at the School of International Studies, Universiti Utara Malaysia
7. Ms. Rosni Binti Adam (Dr.), Chairperson of the Central Welfare and Community Council of PAS (Islamic Party of Malaysia)
8. Ms. Melisa Melina Binti Idris, Assistant Vice President & Anchor at Astro AWANI
9. Ms. Omana (Omna) Rani Sreenivas, Founder and Principal Consultant of ENGENDER Consultancy
10. Ms. Abinaya Dhivya Mohan, Advocacy Director of the Women's Aid Organization (WAO

For more pictures of the trip, please visit our LinkedIn posts to see them:

KAS Malaysia is on tour in Europe with a delegation from Malaysia.

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Our Malaysian delegation‘s study visit to Berlin on the topic sustainable development through gender-responsive policy making was a great success!