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Issue no. 2 | 2021
Special Segment: Celebrating International Women’s Day 2021

In conjunction with International Women’s Day 2021, faculty members at the Gender Studies Programme
participated in several programmes throughout the month of March in 2021 to celebrate, discuss and understand
the lived realities of women through webinars and special programmes:
Online Forum Gender Equality and
“Addressing Sexual Leadership Webinar

Harassment Towards
Gender Equality”

The Gender Studies Program organized the forum
“Addressing Sexual Harassment Towards Gender
Equality” in conjunction with International Women’s
Day in March. It was held on 25 March to enable the
participation of students who had just begun the
semester on 8 March.
A webinar was organised by the Department of
Women’s Development, Ministry of Women, Family and
The themes discussed revolved around the challenges
Community Development on the 10th of March 2021.
faced in addressing sexual harassment in organizations
in Malaysia; shifting the traditional focus away from
This webinar was on the theme “Gender Equality and
addressing sexual harassment by changing the
Leadership” and was live streamed on the Ministry of
behaviour of the survivor, to changing mindsets that
Women, Family and Community Development’s
perceive sexual harassment as trivial and a joke, the
Facebook page.
sufficiency of a sexual harassment policy, and everyday
actions that the public at large can take to support
The panellists at the forum were Dr Norhayati Md Salleh
gender equality.
(a registered counsellor), Dr Jasphal Kaur Bhatt (former
gender expert at the Ministry of Women, Family and
The speakers for the forum were Sara Salimi, member of
Community Development), Dr Abdul Jalil Hassan
Welfare of Female Students Unit, Universiti Malaya
(Senior Deputy Director, Psychological Management
Students’ Union and member of the All Women’s
Section at the Public Service Department) and
Action Society (AWAM), Emellia Shariff, Managing
Associate Professor Dr Shanthi Thambiah (Gender
Partner of Speak Up Malaysia, Yu Ren Chung, Deputy
Studies Programme, UM).
Executive Director, Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO)
and Noor’ain Aini, Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of
Social Sciences and Humanities, University Malaysia
Sarawak. Dr Lai Suat Yan, Coordinator and Senior
Lecturer of the Gender Studies Program moderated the
online forum.

There were 70 attendees for the online forum.

9 | Pulse @ FASS