Women leaders can help to elevate Singapore’s Malay Muslim Organisations

Introduction

I recalled being grateful and pleased with the support we received when one of my good friends was elected as the first female president for our student body organisation. We were also receiving good words and support from the Student Career Welfare Office (SCWO) from MUIS. However, my friend’s motivation was dampened when she received news that the other Muslim students body organisations from other countries were not happy with her achievement.

“How can a female be a leader? They have men.”

“Aren’t they aware that there’s a hadith by Sahih Bukhari that “A people will not succeed who are commanded by a woman.””¹.

However, our ecosystem assured her that we continued to have faith in her to help our community grow and she did it during her leadership. She proved to everyone in her community that she is always there to help them, guide them and fight for them in which she did. This incident bothered me for a long period of time. Was it our cultural mindset and patriarchal ideology? Was it the unfamiliarity of having a woman leader? Shouldn’t leadership be beyond gender?

During my Islamic Education, I was constantly taught on how Islam has elevated the women’s status and how one of the Islamic value systems is based on the principle of equality or equity.

In Surah Al-Hujarat verses 13, Allah swt stated that “O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted.” It will be disheartening and a concern to see future Muslim leaders with such closed-window mindset and if this continues, it will hinder the advancement for gender equality that Islam takes pride in.

In Southeast Asia, it is made aware that most communities are predominantly patriarchal where “girls are born to be fed throughout their lives” and “boys are born to earn and support the whole family”². But it is because of this customary thoughts as well that hinders the progress to achieve gender equality.

In Asia, the representation of women in leaderships is 12.8% which lags behind other countries such as Northern Europe with 35.6%, Western Europe with 23.6% and the Northern American with 20.9%.³ A comparison between Japan, the European Union and the United State was made to see the progress regarding the advancement of women at work. However, in Japan, the representation of women in leaderships falls behind based on little number of aspiring women because of traditional gender role distributions.

In addition, countries that are Muslim dominated are not only lacking behind in terms of women leadership with Indonesia ranking 108, India at 145, Egypt at 138 and Turkey at 126 ⁴ but also lagging behind in the UN’s Global Gender Inequality Index.⁵ According to Ms Chiara Corazza, managing director of the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society, the lack of women representation represent a large loss in terms of economic gain and social impact.

Women leaders creates financial profitability in organisations

Studies have shown that the increasing number of women in senior management increases financial profitability.⁶ According to The Peterson Institute for International Economics report, “a profitable firm at which 30 percent of leaders are women could expect to add more than 1 percentage point to its net margin compared with an otherwise similar firm with no female leaders.”⁷ An assistant dean at the University of Arizona, Eller Collage of Management, Joe Carella noted that diverse companies with women in top management are more creative and “produce more patent by an average of 20 percent more than teams with male leaders.”⁸

However, over the years, companies have been making profits with all men representation.  According to Financial Times, US think-tank companies, the Peterson Institute and EY, found no positive and negative impacts from having a female leader and only marginal impacts from women on the board.⁹ Additionally, the women leaders that are in research and studies are likely achieving, resourceful, and determined compared to the general population of women employees.

However, having more women leaders is not to prove that women are better at business and organisations, it is to establish that their representation influences and enhance the decision-making process. Women representations are proven meaningful as their decisions “are more likely to be more inclusive, representative and take diverse views into account.”¹⁰ This will be able to help Malay Muslim organisation perform in the broad role they require to play such as providing financial and community support for the Malay Muslim Community and dealing with government in policies changes.¹¹

Women existences in leadership roles can help organisations provide greater social impacts

With more women leaders in top management and boards, not only will it strengthened cultural identity, it can help the cultural mindset shifts towards women by eradicating implicit and unconscious bias and tackling micro-inequalities. Although policies and legal development has made blatant discriminations less common, subtle and unknowingly stereotypes and attitudes creating implicit biases which affect behaviours towards others and even professional assessments.¹²

Micro-inequalities in organisations have also prevented career progression and development for women when they are judged on different merits and standards between male and female, resulting a macro-inequality by multiple fold that leads to small amount of women leaders.¹³ However, the presence of women leaders lessens and prevents gender-based discrimination.¹⁴ This is by providing the psychological well-being and ensuring the a more positive gender integration at non-managerial level resulting a more gender equitable at all level. A women CEO is likely to champion equity issues and diversity practices. ¹⁵

It is admittable that the cultural mindset shift of unconscious biasness and micro-inequalities can be combated and change through public awareness, public advocacy, policies and education without the need to increase women representations. Ireland is able to rank 7^th in the Global Gender Gap Index with only 22.5% women parliamentarians.¹⁶ Additionally, during the period of Prophet Muhammad s.a.w, there were not many women scholars or leaders and yet still women rights and issues are elevated. On the contrary, the Prophet s.a.w did consulted his wife Umm Salamah (ra) on a serious matter, and she provided him with a key insight into his problem.¹⁷

Ireland’s neighbouring countries with more women parliamentarians are ranking above in the Global Gender Gap Index such as Iceland, Rwanda and Spain. In India, there is a reduce of corruption in local politics under women leadership.¹⁸ In comparison to male and female mayors in Brazil municipalities, female mayors proved that their decision making power helps to reduce gender imbalance in their organisations and provide more positive influences on other women leaders at lower levels of the government.¹⁹ In Bangladesh and Nigeria, female board representation increases an organisation’s engagement in socially responsible business practices and social reputation.²⁰

Singapore’s Malay Muslims Women leaders

Over the last 5 years, our Malay-Muslim community continued to be open to women leadership in the public sphere and even the religious sphere.

We have Ustazah Rohana Ithin as the first woman to be elected as a full member of the Fatwa Committee, Ustazah Liyana Rosli as the first female head of the Harmony Centre, Ustazah Raihanah Halid as the first female President of Syariah Court and this year, we welcomed Ms Guy Ghazali as the first female Senior President of Syariah Court.

While the political sphere has increased not only the number of women parliamentarians, the number of Malay women parliamentarians has increased as well from 3 to 4 women out of 27 women. This increase ripples the same to Malay Muslim Organisations (MMO) as well.

The current 18th MUIS Council has 5 women out of 19 members compared to the previous batch of 4 women out of 18. Before 2008, the MUIS Appeal Board had no female representation until they elected their first 3 women representation and the panel currently consist 23 members of mixed representation with increased number of female representations.²¹ In 2016, 15% of the Mosque Management Board (MMB) members are women and this is an improved increase from previous years.²²

However, in most major MMOS and MMBs, female representations are roughly 20% in average. This lags behind Singapore’s proportion of 33% female representations in companies’ senior management team.  The number of female CEOs and chairwomen in MMOs are few.

Internal and External factors need to be considered for more women representations

These changes can be made internally and externally. The internal changes include the cultural beliefs and mindsets of the community that needs to be updated. It is essential that our Muslim community is ready to be open and remove old stereotypes, judgements and biasness towards female leaders. These prejudices can be parasites in creating a more accepting community that commends women leaders. Individuals need to be open. This can be done through family interactions at home, with friends and colleagues, attending dialogue and discussions for perspectives and knowledge and even with their own selves through self-reflections or muhasabah.  For women, it is important for them to also seize opportunities and have courage. It is important they should be getting this leadership roles instead of waiting for others to give them the position.

External changes are through greater public awareness and public education about the need and advantages of women leaders. Public education campaigns and advocacy, discussions, information sharing via multiple platforms such are social media platforms should be done so that conversations about women leadership and women issues can continue.

These open and mature conversations are vital in establishing awareness and acceptance of women leadership and potentially creating solutions from various agents and actors.  During PPIS’s International Women’s Day event organised by the Research and Engagement Department (RED), Guest of Honour Ms Nadia Samdin, Member of Parliament of Ang Mo Kio GRC, emphasized the importance of educating the need for women leaders and provide diverse programmes to prove the tenacity of women handling social issues such as retirement adequacy and gender pay gap.²³

Conclusion

Women leaders are critical not only in the corporate sphere where they help to bring in financial profitability and diverse perspective and solutions, it also helps in combating social issues revolving around gender justice and equality. However, despite the capabilities and abilities of women leaders, it is still the role and responsibility of each person in the community to ensure that these women representations are supported and included whether at home, at workplace or policy making discussions. This still requires the collective and conscious effort of each individual in the Muslim community to continue working together to achieve this possibility.

The aspiration for us as a community is not only to reach the standards, but also to be able to readily accept and embrace more women as leaders with an open mind, zero cynicism without any discrimination in our home, our workplace and our community. However, the reality is that we are still weighed down by our own stereotypes and biases and the tendency to judge. It is important that we come together as a society to help this cultural and mindset shift into a more progressive society to be more inclusive of women leaders. This includes to withhold judgements and assess merits, capabilities, qualifications, and experiences just like the men.

¹ Sahih Bukhari 4163
² Culture and mental health of women in South-East Asia, 118
³ Women leaders, gender equality key to creating more jobs in Asia, September 16, 2019 The Straits Times
⁴ Monthly ranking of women in national parliaments, IPU Parline, Global data on national parliaments,
⁵ Gender Inequality Index, United National Development Programme,
⁶ https://www.ft.com/content/a3267dfe-cc1a-11e5-be0b-b7ece4e953a0
⁷ Is Gender Diversity Profitable? Evidence from a Global Survey, pg 2
⁸ Companies with more female executive make more money—here’s why, March 2, 2018, CNBC
⁹ https://www.ft.com/content/a3267dfe-cc1a-11e5-be0b-b7ece4e953a0
¹⁰ Women in Leadership, 2018
¹¹ Perception Survey on the Malay/Muslim Community in Singapore, pg 19
¹² Is there a Female Leadership Advantage? Pg 18
¹³ Why Empowering Women Leaders matter
¹⁴ Companies with more female executive make more money—here’s why, March 2, 2018, CNBC
¹⁵ Is there a Female Leadership Advantage? Pg 5
¹⁶ Why gender parity matters
¹⁷ Sahih Bukhari 2731
¹⁸ Power with purpose; How women’s leadership boosts the economy and society
¹⁹ Is there a Female Leadership Advantage? Pg 5
²⁰ Is there a Female Leadership Advantage? Pg 4
²¹ More women on Muis Board of Appeal, Feb 6 2016, The Straits Times
²² Speech by Chief Executive of Muis, Hj Abdul Razak Maricar at the Mosque Investiture and MODs Graduation
²³ Breaking the Glass Ceiling – PPIS Inaugural Film Review cum Panel Discussion

References

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