Women making waves in the workplace

Taylor’s University clubs collaborate to celebrate Women’s Equality Day with a speaker forum.

Social media post promoting LABELLED | Source © @tlmun_club on Instagram

With no law against gender discrimination and bias present in the workplace, four women and an activist share how they and other women continue persevering through all odds and adversities.

‘LABELLED: Gender Stereotypes in Industries’, a speaker forum was organised to address areas of gender, equality and stereotypes in the workforce, and in particular, the difficulties faced by women in male-dominated industries.

Hosted in conjunction with Women’s Equality Day, the forum was held on Friday, 10 September, through a collaborative effort by three clubs, namely Taylor’s Lakeside Model United Nations (TLMUN), Dia/Them, and VOCAL.

About 65 people attended the online forum, featuring a distinguished lineup of panellists.

The panellists included Malaysian engineer, Dr. Siva Vanajah, deputy executive officer for WAO, Yu Ren Chung, TaniHub corporate finance apprentice, Yorin Anggari, MMA fighter, Colleen Augustin, and independent broadcast journalist, Tehmina Kaoosji.

Q&A session with the LABELLED panellists | Source © Personal Archives

Due to the diversity of experiences faced by the panellists in their respective industries, fascinating insights and opinions were shared during the two-hour virtual event.

Vanajah, being the only woman finalist selected for the Malaysian Angkasawan program, expressed how the notion of women not going to space because of their gender was ‘bullshit’.

She went on to say, “We have to come out of that mindset where we think that there are some things I cannot do because I’m a woman.”

Similarly, when asking Colleen how long till the glass ceiling breaks for female athletes, she replied with, “What glass ceiling are you talking about? I don’t believe in a glass ceiling; I don’t believe there is a limit.”

Tehmina also shared how male and female broadcasters in the media industry were not measured by the same metric of ‘pretty privilege’.

“A man could literally look however he looked, wear something that made him look like a sack of potatoes, and still be put on air as though he were a champion broadcaster,” she said.

But as a woman broadcaster, you’re put under the spotlight and scrutinised through a microscope a thousand times.”

According to a survey conducted by WAO, more than 56 percent of Malaysian women have experienced at least one form of gender discrimination in the workplace.

Ren Chung, speaking as a representative of WAO, said the continued existence of discrimination was due to lack of legislation or law that prohibited it in the workplace, or other spheres.

At present, the WAO has called for a review of Employment Act 1955, urging everyone to join in their efforts to combat gender-based discrimination of women and creating a fairer environment in the workplace.

As Vanajah noted in the forum, “Centuries of oppressing women, and look at how far we’ve come being women in this world right now. Imagine if we were not oppressed, what we could’ve done.”

A livestream recording can be found on Facebook under ‘Taylor’s Speakers Corner’ for those who missed out on the event.