WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT

IN CELEBRATION OF International Women’s Day 2021, August Man Malaysia is pleased to dedicate a very special feature in our March issue to Malaysian women who have made an impact on art. In addition, I dedicate this note to the memory of the leading figure who paved the way for women’s suffrage, Emmeline Pankhurst, by sharing an excerpt from her iconic speech, Freedom or death:

“We women see so clearly the fact that the only way to deal with this thing is to raise the status of women; first the political status, then the industrial and the social status of women. You must make women count as much as men; you must have an equal standard of morals; and the only way to enforce that is through giving women political power so that you can get that equal moral standard registered in the laws of the country. It is the only way. I don’t know whether men sufficiently realise it, but we women do realise it: we more and more realise it, and so women have nerved themselves to speak out on this question. First of all, we feel that what is most impo ant is that women should know it. Ten years ago it would have been impossible for any woman or any man to speak openly upon that question on any pla orm, because women had been taught that they must keep their eyes closed to all these things; women had been taught that they must ignore the fact even that a large section of their sex were living lives of degradation and outlawry. If they knew of it at all, they were told in vague terms that it was in order to make the lives of the rest of the women safe; they were told it was a necessary evil; they were told it was something that the good woman does not understand and must not know anything about. All that is now at an end. Women are refusing, men in this meeting, even if that were true, to have their lives made safe at the expense of their sisters. The women are determined. A good deal of the opposition to woman suffrage is coming from the very worst element in the population, who realise that once you get woman suffrage, a great many places that are tolerated today will have to disappear. It is perhaps a hard saying for many men that there will have to be self-control and an equal standard of morals, but the best men now, the scientists of every country, are suppo ing the woman’s point of view.” ̶ delivered on November 13, 1913 in Hartford, Connecticut.

Happy Women’s Day!