The “Study on Malaysian Public Attitudes and Perceptions towards Violence Against Women (VAW)” showed that only 34.3% of the respondents supported the idea of consent.
It found that 37.2% of the 1,000 respondents endorsed the idea that women liked to be chased after even if they were not interested, while 33.9% of the respondents were uncertain.
WAO research and advocacy officer Anis Farid said the idea that “women want to be chased but play hard to get” was an especially predominant narrative in Malaysian society.
“This suggests that a substantial segment of Malaysians have poor regard for women’s decisions and choices in their intimate and sexual relations.
“More concerning though is that it also suggests that such attitudes are acceptable in Malaysian society, going by the high level of respondents either endorsing it or expressing uncertainty when it comes to this,” she said at a press conference to reveal the NGO’s findings.
It is WAO’s first nationally representative study of Malaysian public attitudes and perceptions towards violence against women in 25 years.
The study looked into the underlying contributing factors for VAW measured through, among others, domestic violence, child marriage and rape.
Anis said the findings of the study likely meant that Malaysians’ disregard for the right of women to consent extended beyond their intimate and sexual relations to their everyday life as well.
“Consent in general is poorly understood by Malaysians, which leads to rampant endorsement of rape myths in Malaysian society,” she said.
Isabel Chung, a research and advocacy officer with WAO, said rape myths were still pervasive in Malaysia.
One of the key findings of the study is that about 88.3% believe rape happens because men are not able to control their sexual desires.
“This echoes the idea of violence as an uncontrollable, somewhat emotional act,” she said.
She said they included rape myths in the study as rape myths normalised violence and shaped the way Malaysians collectively understood and spoke about violence “as something that’s not the perpetrator’s fault”.
Another interesting finding of the study is that many respondents do not feel that gender inequality is an issue, or they are uncertain and presumably unaware of the reality of gender inequality in Malaysia.
Some 73% of males expressed negative or uncertain attitudes towards gender inequality while 54.3% of women expressed the same.
One of the key recommendations of the study is that Malaysia needs prevention programmes that focus more on actively challenging underlying shared community attitudes and social norms that support VAW and gender inequality.
“Existing programmes focus on raising awareness on what constitutes VAW, its unacceptability and resources for help,” said Shazana Agha, who is WAO head of research.
She urged the government to conduct public attitude surveys every four years to track progression and regression of Malaysian attitudes towards VAW.
The respondents of the study consisted of 51% male and 49% female. Also, 46.8% of them were from the B40 income group. Most of the respondents were between 25 and 34 years old.
The study was conducted by WAO with support from the Global Fund for Women, Yayasan Sime Darby, contributions from a panel of five Malaysian academic experts and 16 VAW survivors.
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