Indigenous Women's Leadership in Malaysia

Temuan community from 3 villages (Kg. Tekir, Kg. Tering and Gebok)

Land is integral to the identity of the Orang Asli community in Peninsular Malaysia. The increase in land grabs at the expense of the Orang Asli rights has culminated in the community resisting through court cases, blockades and demonstrations. This video clearly describes the predicament of Orang Asli and land ownership as elaborated by Tijah Yak Chopil of Jaringan Kampung Orang Asli Semenanjung Malaysia (JKOASM).

Empower's experience of conducting leadership programs for Orang Asli women has been very insightful. The initial engagement started in 2013, when a fledgling focus group discussion was conduct among 10 women leaders from Negeri Sembilan, Selangor, Pahang, Perak and Johor. To date, Empower has managed to train 50 women with leadership potential from various villages in Peninsular Malaysia.

Land Mapping Workshop in partnership with JOAS in June 2016

Thus far the module for leadership training of Orang Asli women has been shaped through the close partnership developed with the women. Many different approaches were employed to engage the women in order for knowledge to be shared mutually. Methods such as story telling employing powerful narratives of past women leaders in their traditions were collected. Our favourite is a story relayed by Tijah Yak Chopil from her grandmother. 'Ken Tatau', possibly the first woman 'halaq' (shaman) among the Semai community was introduced in our training.

Fatimah of Kg. Mengkapoh, Pahang

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Day One: Household Interviews

Meeting Mrs Panaso We reached our final respondent for the day, Mrs Panaso at almost 1 pm. Her house was a typical traditional house. It had no rooms, some wooden shelves inside and a lot of bundles. The walls were made of kalakat which is woven oil palm fronds. The fronds are woven and painted over with shellac to make it water proof. Oil palm the fronds are dried until they turn yellow and then used for kalakat. Mrs Panaso was a very slim woman of 60 with a shock of dyed brown hair. She is cheerful by nature and very accomodating. She was about to start her lunch of small dried fish, rice and fluffy brown dish of something I did not recognize. Mrs Panaso's deep well Her house had an open air kitchen which was a cheerful and warm place. She used fire wood for her cooking. She also had a deep well from which she obtained her water supply. The metal pump looked unwieldy to manoeuvre and I wondered how she managed. Mrs Panaso's open stove ...

Learning to Mentor

Background I had a wonderful opportunity to attend a useful workshop organized by the Malaysian Institute of Management (MIM) in collaboration with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS). The workshop was entitled 'Women Mentoring Development Programme' was attended by over 40 women from various fields: civil society, small and medium level entrepreneurs, training and education. The training was conducted in English by two master trainers who have had experience in mentoring women entrepreneurs. They presented a comprehensive workshop structure which included personal mastery, skills mastery and process mastery. We started with discovering our basic personality attributes to understand our prominent characteristics. We were introduced to a local developed personality assessment tool the LEONARD Personality Inventory. It was quite interesting to discover one's strength and shortcomings based on the analysis. I am going to highlight some of the elements of the worksh...

Giant Slayers - Asian Agri vs. Serikat Buruh Sejahtera Indonesia 1992

PT Andalas IntiAgro Lestari I surveyed this plantation yesterday which is located in Aek Kuo, Labuhanbatu Utara. It is part of the plantations under Asian Agri (Oil Palm Producer) in North Sumatra. There about 400 workers employed in this plantation, non-management staff. There are various tasks done by workers, harvesting, spraying, fertilizing and general work. Women work as daily wage workers or as 'buruh harian lepas' as they are known here. They earn IDR 61,000 per day ( RM19.29) working from 6.30 am to 1.30 pm. They carry out a range of tasks - spraying (semprot), segregation fertilizer (menguntil), weeding, census taking, maintenance and fertilizing (memupuk). Women's participation Women are recruited by the management of the plantation but not as permanent workers with benefits. These women's husbands work on the plantation and are permanent workers or 'SKU'. The work tasked to women is part of the plantation's production. Some ...

Unseen Faces, Unheard Voices

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