In a statement today, Yeo said direct discrimination and “a complex pattern of hidden barriers” prevented Malaysian women from achieving their full potential in this field.

She cited 2016 World Economic Forum numbers ranking Malaysia 106 out of 144 countries in terms of the gender gap.

This puts Malaysia behind not only western countries but also countries like Kazakhstan (51), Azerbajian (86), Tajikistan (93), Bangladesh (72), India (87), China (99) Indonesia (88), Vietnam (65), Thailand (71) and Brunei (103), she said.

“Malaysia needs to put serious work on gender equality to close the gender gap,” she said.

“I believe that one of the most important things to do in women empowerment is to have meaningful female representation in the legislatures and cabinets, because women empowerment requires policy and legislative reform.”

Yeo said Malaysia’s representation of women in politics had not risen significantly for a decade, adding that it lagged behind the already-low world average by half.

According to Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) statistics, she said, the world average women representation in July 2013 was at 20.9%.

In Malaysia, currently only one in 10 elected representatives was female, compared with the world average of one in five, she said.

“Except for Selangor, which has women representation of 27% in the state legislature, all other state legislatures and Parliament have only 0% to 16% women legislators.”

Although 2013 saw the election of Hannah Yeoh as Selangor’s first female speaker, Yeo said the road ahead for women in Malaysian politics was still long and winding.

She urged all political groups to work towards attracting more women into their parties by breaking existing cultural and structural barriers.

“We also need more women, who are willing to break the traditional stereotype of women’s role in society, to join politics.”