Civil Society and the Gender Politics of Economic Competitiveness in Malaysia

Malaysian government planning and policy-making have increasingly come to recognise the role of women and the household in the promotion of a number of strategies aimed at enhancing economic competitiveness. Government planning documents emphasise the need to boost women's labour market participation, increase women's levels of entrepreneurship, and the need to strengthen and support the family unit-developments that can be understood in terms of a market-building agenda in which women's labour and the household are viewed as untapped resources in the struggle to maintain international competitiveness. This article explores an important dimension of this policy turn: the role of civil society in both promoting and resisting this market-building agenda. The paper focuses in particular on two case studies: religious non-governmental organisations involved in implementing 'family strengthening' programmes and civil society engagements with the issue of women's representation on corporate boards.