Isma, stop undoing progress

I work very hard in trying to teach my four-year-old daughter that she can do and be anything she wants to and that being a girl or a boy makes no difference at all. What is important is that she is a human being.

But it's really difficult even in this day and age when one would actually assume that gender equality should be understood by all; but the truth is the opposite. It seems that patriarchal sexism is still as dominant as ever.

Certain friends and relatives always throw lavish praises of how pretty she looks or how a good girl should act so as to look pretty, but never pour positive reinforcements regarding self-esteem, confidence and intelligence.

What is worse is the fact that gender biasness happens even in the public domain. And most recently, even women are putting that extra effort to make sure their fellow women are held down in life.

Isma's head of family and society bureau, Dr Nur Farrah Nadia Najib, was reported to have said that Malaysia can be a high-achieving nation with the men leading the workforce and the women staying home and raising children.

She went on to say that men should put in most of their efforts in shaping the nation while women should get a good education and stay at home to concentrate on raising healthy and successful boys and girls.

After reading the news reports on this, I had to check the calendar just to see if I might have stepped into a time machine and got transported to a time when Neanderthal men were knocking females on their heads to drag them back to the cave.

How could someone, a woman not less, could come out and make such a statement? And what is ironic is the fact that this woman happens to be a medical doctor who obviously studied hard and is now practicing medicine.

Does it mean only she can have the opportunity to be what she wants while other women can't? Are you Pol Pot who had the opportunity to study and become an intellectual yet denied his countrymen that same opportunity?

Now, aside from having to teach my daughter that she as a girl is just as good as any other human being, I have to also educate her that there are people, and even other women, who do not want her to think that way.

Rather than hauling up radio presenters who are constantly promoting intellectual discourse and understanding to be investigated under the Sedition Act (which I totally am against), women like Isma's Dr Nur Farrah are the ones who need to be banned or charged with some sort of offence over what she is saying and trying to promote as it is dangerous and detrimental to the country. – December 19, 2014.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.