sooooo just parking my speech for international women’s day 2019 celebrations at my university! so honoured that they invited me to partake in a student sharing session.

*takes deep breath*

i feel it is important for me to begin with this question. why is international women’s day significant to us?

we now know IWD as a day of celebration introduced by the united nations in 1975. however, it is incredible that the concept of “women’s day” goes back to the early 20^th century, where the first recorded demonstration was organized by the socialist party of america in 1909.

in fact, once women in soviet russia gained suffrage in 1917, march 8 was declared a national holiday there. perhaps IWD is not important enough to be day off in the imagination of many nations, but with the continuous revival of feminism especially with the #MeTooMovement and Women’s March, today remains as an opportunity to express womanhood in its most political form.

regardless, history or more appropriately, herstory does not lie about the legacy of contesting ideologies in creating a space for women to embrace their agency and fight for equal rights.

yet, such historiography still leaves limited room for women and the myriad of dynamic roles they have played in shaping the course of humanity’s progress.

do we only commemorate women because they have played a primary role in shifting the political tide? should we only celebrate women when they have invented something that could save the world?

this is not to undermine the remarkable achievements of women in fields such as science and technology as well as the arts and social sciences. in fact, the glass ceiling is an extremely real phenomenon of which many women are fighting to shatter and that includes myself. But here is something else to think about.

how do we consider the manifestations of feminism in its various forms, even in its most invisible state?

when i co-founded my organization, imagined malaysia, this would always be at the back of my mind as I continued to work towards my dream to be a historian.

i wonder, how can we use IWD as a space to go beyond what we already know as essential to empowering a certain kind woman?

this IWD, let us speak about female empowerment from various angles of experience and memory. how do we do that?

my mentor, dr sumit mandal, once mentioned in class that the study of history and dependence on conventional archives did not contribute to learning about the story of women in making meaningful social transformations.

instead, it was the rather unconventional research methods often deemed to be not archive-worthy that were central in documenting women’s history. given the persistence of patriarchal structures in family, society and government, women remain at the periphery when it comes to their influence in decision-making processes.

by emphasizing on the most ordinary aspects of the lives of women, a new kind of history became the ideal vehicle for presenting women’s history. this includes subjects such as women in education, birth control, domestic work, marriage, sexuality and motherhood.

take rosaline hoalim for example. she was a young medical student who met her peranakan husband in cambridge, england. rosaline and her siblings would eventually become one of british malaya’s most influential families.

rosaline’s british guyanese heritage brings an equivocal sense of cosmopolitanism to what would be a determining factor in her children.

most notably, her daughter pg lim would rise into prominence in the making of modern malaysia. Not only was pg one of the first women to practice law in the country, she would be best known as the first female ambassador.

as described by her son, lim kean siew, who would be best known as one of penang’s best lawyers and the founder of the labour party of malaya, rosaline never failed to instill the values of social reform in her children.

inevitably, this had resulted in a family that would be remembered through the course of malaysia’s historical changes.

while the iconic 1909 garment worker’s strike in new york has become a dominant narrative in women’s history, it is also important to highlight the overall impact of such an event in our awareness of the challenges of protecting the rights of workers in the light of global economic transformations.

a great example of this would be the work of malaysian anthropologist, aihwa ong titled “spirits of resistance and capitalist discipline”.

what was so brilliant about aihwa’s book was that it documented the cultural and political impact of “runaway factories” on the developing world. through ethnographical research, the book delivers an innovative analysis of the lives of young rural malay women who helped launch malaysia’s rise as a tiger economy.

these findings capture the kind of paradoxical experiences that shape life as a modern Muslim woman in the midst of massive modernization. aihwa noted the various resistance tactics by female workers to protest labor discipline and male control in the modern industrial situation.

“female complaints” such as crying, period cramps and even falling prey to angry spirits were found to be frequent tropes that allowed women to defy back-breaking production targets and poor working conditions.

i find this very insightful because these “female problems” which have often been framed as the limited potential and capacity of women can actually be redefined so that women can gain control and power in patriarchal work spaces.

it cannot be denied that without the course of herstory, the progress of countries would not have evolved the way it did. the study of women’s history will always continue to expand so that it can be more sincere and inclusive.

i hope what i have shared with you today illustrates why it is crucial to radically ponder upon what IWD means to women of all walks of life. this is because i believe that through making greater sense of the past, we can seek solutions and opportunities for the women of today.

*fin*