Pemerkasaan Representasi Politik Wanita di Malaysia: Analisis Pilihan Raya Umum ke-12 (PRU12), 2008

This paper focuses on Malaysian women political representation in 12th General Election 2008. The main objective of the paper is to analyze women political representation in Malaysia within the empowerment framework. In this paper, political representation is define through feminist epistemology and is divided into two perspectives which are descriptive representation and substantive representation. This paper indicates that PRU12 has improved women political representation from descriptive perspective. However, from substantive representation perspective, it has not achieved any substantial changes. From empowerment framework analysis, this paper has identified positive changes and improvement in certain areas of women political representation such as in nomination of women candidates. Yet, there are more challenges and difficulties faced in order to achieve 30% critical masses of women political representation in Parliament and State Legislative Assembly.