Gender Politics and the Pursuit of Competitiveness in Malaysia

Women on Board

Juanita Elias

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429602870
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Conditions
• Index: Economics

This book is concerned with how the pursuit of national economic competitiveness by states has come to be intertwined with a globalised gender agenda—one in which women and the household economy are seen as 'untapped' resources.

In many East and Southeast Asian economies, competitiveness and the dangers of the middle-income trap dominate economic policy agendas: states' commitments to gender equality goals are frequently framed around 'business case' logics in which women's empowerment and women's increased engagement in the productive economy is linked to the national economic project of building and enhancing competitiveness. This book looks to the case of Malaysia in order to assess how the increasingly dominant view that gender equality is 'smart economics' plays out in practice. Drawing upon extensive case study research and interview data, the book hones in on the complex gender politics that are at work within government initiatives that seek to enhance competitiveness via increasing women's labour force participation, efforts to strengthen marriage and family life, and attempts to boost women's entrepreneurialism and status within the corporate world.

Providing an account of the gender politics at work within ongoing processes of state transformation in Asia, this book will appeal to researchers and students in gender studies, Southeast Asian studies, International Political Economy and public policy.

1 Promoting competitiveness in Malaysia

The current emphasis in Malaysian economic policymaking and planning on competitiveness and building a knowledge economy is not in any way a sudden policy shift. It was effectively the reassertion of a set of long-standing economic strategies. This chapter provides an account of the broader political-economic context within which competitiveness promotion has unfolded in Malaysia since the early 1990s and identifies how the competitiveness agenda came to be institutionalised within the state planning apparatus – namely via the adoption of more corporate-oriented and managerialist modes of governance. Economic reforms designed to promote competitiveness have tended to prioritise market-based solutions to social and political problems and emphasise the need to build and develop new market opportunities. Such a market fundamentalist state development agenda invariably sparks dispute and forms of resistance. One discussion developed in this chapter, for example, concerns how political contestation emerged in the early 2010s over the potential for market-based reforms to undermine government commitments to preserving and maintaining certain forms of Malay privilege within the country’s political economy.

In this chapter, I direct my analysis to focus on questions concerning why and how the Malaysian government sought to reorient development planning and policy-making towards the pursuit of national economic competitiveness. Particular emphasis is placed on the role that ideas, measures, and global rankings of competitiveness played in attempts to ‘plan’ development and how this enabled the state to present development as a techno-rational, measurable project. Thus, the Malaysian state sought to render technical, and thereby depoliticise, forms of state rule associated with the promotion of neoliberal policy objectives – shifts that can be linked to wider processes associated with the ‘institutionalisation of competitive market discipline’ within development thought and practice that entail ‘a more all-encompassing technocratic agenda being operationalised in the name of development’ (Carroll 2012: 351). A recognition of growing technocratic hegemony within the state is not to imply, however, that economic planning unfolds in a straightforward (top-down) and uncontested manner (cf. Scott 1998; Rigg 2012). As the analysis below will make clear, simply understanding the experience of neoliberal reform in terms of the imposition of regulatory governance structures designed to foster the development of both free markets and neoliberal citizen-subjects is inadequate, not least because economic reform agendas are continually contested both inside and outside of the state.

This is particularly the case in Malaysia where government policymaking has long supported what might be viewed as a dualistic economic structure in which heavily protected industries coexist with what is, in the large part, a highly open/liberalised and FDI-dominated economy (Case 2005). These economic structures entangle the state and serve to reproduce factions and interest groups with oftentimes quite distinct and contradictory political agendas (Jesudason 1989; Case 2005; Gomez 2012; Khoo 2018). Perhaps the most significant effect of the 1971 New Economic Policy (NEP), and the subsequent emphasis on providing the Malay (or bumiputera¹) population with better access to and status within the modern capitalist economy, has been the development of a significant Malay business class. Closely linked to the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) (the lead party within the former multiethnic ruling coalition the Barisan Nasional (BN)), this class emerged as a powerful set of vested interests within the state. During the 1980s and 1990s – a period characterised by Khoo as one of ‘oligarchic reconstitution’ (2018: 229) – economic power came to be further consolidated within a politically-linked Malay statist-capitalist elite who benefitted from the roll out of state privatisation programmes and the rise of Government-Linked Companies (GLCs).² Such policies functioned to consolidate the economic power of an ethnically Malay elite who, especially in resource-based sectors such as oil or plantation agriculture, formed something of an inner circle of state-capitalist interests characterised by a revolving door between state and industry (Khoo 2018: 232). At the same time, an already weak labour movement was deliberately sidelined from wider development planning trajectories that were reliant on ensuring flexible labour markets in the name of cost competitiveness (Bhopal and Todd 2000; Crinis and Parasuraman 2016). Aggressive anti-unionism formed part of wider efforts to supress leftist opposition during the early years of Malaysian nation-building (Tajuddin 2012), and later, in the 1980s, industrial relations reforms that promoted the development of Japanese-style in-house unions as a much less radical and largely firm-controlled form of worker organising further weakened the power of organised labour (Kuruvilla 1995; Bhopal and Todd 2000).

Most studies of the political economy of Malaysia’s economic transformation have highlighted the intersecting nature of class and ethnic politics in this way, viewing these class and racial dynamics as central to any understanding of state power and state transformation. But there is relatively little analysis of Malaysia’s political economy that explores the intersections between class, ethnicity, and gender in the making of Malaysian developmentalism. Many scholars have, of course, pointed to the centrality of feminised low-wage labour in the export sector to Malaysia’s industrial expansion (Ariffin 1981, 1994; Ong 1987; Lie and Lund 1994; Elias 2004), but few analysts move to situate such a discussion within the wider (gendered) political economy of the Malaysian state (with the exception of Ng 1999). Like many other Asian economies undergoing export-led growth, the suppression of labour rights and the construction of low-wage and highly feminised workforces served an important role in developmental success (Seguino 2000). Although these labour market transformations occurred in the earlier years of the country’s economic development (and thus prior to the emergence of competitiveness as an overriding economic policy concern), Malaysia’s experience has been presented as a ‘model’ example of how to build successful labour market competitiveness in ways that generate benefits for women in particular; a paradigm case of ‘pro-poor’ employment expansion which has ‘brought large numbers of women into that labour force, with important consequences for poverty reduction and the status of women’ (Asian Development Bank 2004: 8). Such claims certainly need to be nuanced in light of the poor workplace conditions and lack of access to trade union rights in export manufacturing and other key economic sectors (Grace 1990). So, although the discussion included in this chapter is not specifically focused on gender, it is important to grasp the broader (and oftentimes starkly gender-blind) narratives and practices of competitiveness promotion in Malaysia that inform the gendered analysis presented in Chapters 2 to 5.

There are three lines of analysis explored in this chapter. The first considers how and why competitiveness emerged as a policy priority in Malaysia and the kinds of policies and initiatives that have been undertaken in the name of promoting competitive economic growth. This section considers how a preoccupation with the need to deliver national economic competitiveness stemmed from a variety of policy concerns – not least perceptions around the need to ‘escape’ the middle-income ‘trap’. Attention is also drawn to the governmental effects of indexing and benchmarking technologies in sustaining this preoccupation. In the second part of the chapter, I look to how competitiveness-oriented reforms are enacted via forms of state transformation as seen in the emergence of NPM. The third section of the chapter provides an account of how Malaysia’s long enduring system of affirmative action has demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of the expansion of market-oriented competitiveness agendas that former prime minister Najib Tun Razak attempted to introduce in the early 2010s. This final discussion provides important insights into how the contested politics of national economic competitiveness never unfold in a straightforward and top-down manner. While policy documents, development plans, and government speeches reveal commitments to market-oriented neoliberal reforms, these commitments come into conflict with enduring and embedded structures of both class and ethnicity, and, as later chapters of this book will show, gender.

The appeal to competitiveness

Ideas concerning the need to build an innovative, knowledge-oriented, and less low-wage dependent economy have been continually emphasised in key government planning documents, ministerial speeches, and media releases since the early 1990s. In tracing the lineage of competitiveness-oriented planning and policymaking in Malaysia, a key turning point was the adoption, under the first prime ministership of Mahathir Mohamad (1981–2003), of the Wawasan (Vision) 2020 policy aimed at propelling the country to ‘developed country status’. One particularly important section of the speech that Mahathir gave to launch Vision 2020 is the following passage in which the need ‘to secure the establishment of a competitive economy’ is spelt out in the following terms:

Such an economy must be able to sustain itself over the longer term, must be dynamic, robust and resilient. It must mean, among other things: A diversified and balanced economy with a mature and widely based industrial sector, a modern and mature agriculture sector and an efficient and productive and an equally mature services sector; an economy that is quick on its feet, able to quickly adapt to changing patterns of supply, demand and competition; an economy that is technologically proficient, fully able to adapt, innovate and invent, that is increasingly technology intensive, moving in the direction of higher and higher levels of technology; an economy that has strong and cohesive industrial linkages throughout the system; an economy driven by brain-power, skills and diligence in possession of a wealth of information, with the knowledge of what to do and how to do it; an economy with high and escalating productivity with regard to every factor of production; an entrepreneurial economy that is self-reliant, outward-looking and enterprising; an economy sustained by an exemplary work ethic, quality consciousness and the quest for excellence; an economy characterised by low inflation and a low cost of living; an economy that is subjected to the full discipline and rigour of market forces.

(Mahathir 1991, my emphasis)

Such statements are indicative of the way in which securing competitive economic growth was seen as best pursued through expanding the reach of the market economy; that is, via forms of deep marketisation. Central to the formulation of Vision 2020 was the ambition to deliver high rates of growth via the expansion of a knowledge-driven economy (Turner 2007). To this end, a range of policies were put forward that continue to have a central place in Malaysia’s ongoing commitments to achieving competitive economic growth. First, strategic industrial policies aimed at supporting the emergence of knowledge-based industries and services. Second, a continued and strengthened commitment to processes of privatisation and deregulation (‘aimed specifically at enhancing competitiveness, efficiency and productivity in the economy’ (Mahathir 1991)), policies that had begun in the early 1980s (Yusof and Bhattasali, 2008; Lee 2012). Third, a range of rhetorical commitments to building the ‘right’ kind of market-oriented, competition-minded, yet morally upstanding entrepreneurial citizens able to support the nation’s drive for economic success (Ong 2005: 698; Chio 2008). This emphasis on the need to widen and deepen capitalist relations into all sections of society, into the very everyday experience of development, is a sentiment which was clearly conveyed in the following section of a 2000 speech made by Mahathir:

The K [knowledge]-economy … is not an elitist process but one involving every Malaysian from the teacher in the classroom to his pupil, to his fisherman father and housewife mother, to the driver who drives the school bus, to the mechanic who maintains it, to the engineer who designs the vehicle, to the entrepreneur who owns the company, to his secretary, the janitor and the chairman of the Board. In order for us to succeed with the paradigm shift … all Malaysians, including the young of the Wawasan generation, will have to be fully involved.

(Mahathir 2000)

Finally, at work within all of Mahathir’s statements on Vision 2020 and the knowledge economy was a renewed emphasis on nation-building and ideas of national unity. These sentiments invariably coexisted uneasily alongside commitments to maintaining and enhancing the economic status of the country’s ethnically Malay population.³ Moreover, when Mahathir emphasised the centrality of ‘market forces’ in delivering economic success, resulting policies were always pursued within the context of the post-NEP political economy.

As mentioned in the introductory chapter to this book, Vision 2020 has cast a long shadow over Malaysian economic policymaking and planning – with almost all current major planning documents making clear reference to achieving the ‘developed country’ or ‘high income’ goal by the year 2020. The 11th Malaysia Plan (2016–2020), for example, opens with the following statement:

The Eleventh Malaysia Plan, 2016–2020, is the final leg in the journey towards realising Vision 2020. Launched in 1991, Vision 2020 envisions Malaysia as a fully developed country along all dimensions – economically, politically, socially, spiritually, psychologically, and culturally – by the year 2020. Emboldened by the great strides made in the last half decade, the Eleventh Plan reaffirms the Government’s commitment to a vision of growth that is anchored on the prosperity and wellbeing of its rakyat.⁴ The Eleventh Plan is premised on a progressive and united Bangsa Malaysia⁵ that shares a common commitment towards building a better Malaysia for all Malaysians.

(Office of the Prime Minister, Malaysia 2015: 1–1)

It was in the wake of the economic slowdown that followed the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis that government initiatives aimed at bolstering national economic competitiveness gained a particular urgency. The Third Outline Perspective Plan of 2001–2010, under which the Eighth and Ninth Malaysia Plans were produced, further emphasised the need to develop a knowledge-based economy in order to remain competitive. This focus was reiterated during the prime ministership of Najib Tun Razak with the launching of the 10th Malaysia Plan (2011–2015) as part of the country’s New Economic Model (NEM). Under the NEM, Najib established an Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) designed to move the economy to a high-income, services-based economy through a focus on 12 sectors or ‘National Key Economic Areas’ (NKEAs). This was to be complemented by a Government Transformation Programme (GTP) – a results-driven approach to public sector reform. See also Table 1.1.

The GTP is discussed in more detail below as an example of the kind of reform project that has served to institutionalise logics of competitiveness within the institutional frameworks of the state. But it is also worth looking at how the economic policy agenda of the ETP was tied to an understanding of national competitiveness promotion as something to be best achieved via forms of market-building – that is, how the ETP significantly enhanced state commitments to developing new market opportunities, alongside the deepening of the reach of the market into ever more areas of everyday life.

The ETP identified 12 key economic areas (the NKEAs⁶) some of which were traditional areas of economic concentration (especially plantation agriculture and oil and gas) but many of which involved commitments to building and expanding new markets, not only into previously state-dominated sectors, but also into less marketised spaces. Thus to just select a few of the projects as indicative examples: There was an emphasis on expanding the role of private healthcare provision (and a clear role identified for medical tourism in developing the private sector); the need to develop an ecotourism sector; projects aimed at luring foreign universities and private schools to establish Malaysian campuses; the promotion of green technologies/industries; and the desire to not only expand the Islamic finance sector, but also to become a major player in the provision of Islamic finance education. Importantly, at the cor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction: bringing women ‘on board’
• 1 Promoting competitiveness in Malaysia
• 2 Transforming women’s economic participation: gender policies as competitiveness promotion
• 3 ‘A first-class mentality with a heart for progress’: the family, Islam, and the moral political economy of competitiveness
• 4 Civil society, market feminism, and the creation of ‘board ready’ women
• 5 Whose social reproduction? Migrant domestic work and the new Malaysian ‘middle-class reality’
• Conclusion: gendering competitiveness – comparative insights
• Bibliography
• Index