Women's Centre for Change (WCC) (Penang, Malaysia)
I am currently interning with an organization called the Women's Centre for Change (WCC) in Penang, Malaysia. The organization works to forward women's rights within Malaysia and throughout South East Asia by engaging in advocacy work and campaigning for legal reforms. I have spent the majority of my time with WCC undertaking research for a European Union funded research project on judicial bias and sexual crimes. This research involves doing reviews of academic literature on judicial bias and the court system and research of primary media sources. In addition to doing research for the project, I have also been involved in research design. As the project has just begun there is a lot of work to be done in the areas of literature review and project goal definition. Thus, I have been involved in meetings with the general committee regarding research proposals and objectives, editing of research frameworks, discussion and evaluation of the processes and procedures required to accomplish the research goals.
I am also involved in advocacy work both within and outside of the judicial system. I have written letters to various ministers regarding such issues as: the inception of sexual harassment laws, the unconstitutionality of provisions restricting the amount of children a female government employee can have, and other issues engaging the infringement of women's rights. WCC is currently involved as an amicus in a court case involving a Malaysian Airlines stewardess who was fired for becoming pregnant. Along with Zarizana Abdul Aziz, the organization president, I have been involved in compiling case law, writing amicus curie briefs and assembling memos for the stewardess's lawyer regarding the interpretation and application of equality provisions in Commonwealth countries.
Finally, I was involved in the production of a report for the United Nations regarding practices and laws that support or denigrate women's rights in member Nations. The report is the result of a conference in Vienna attended by WCC committee members regarding Violence Against Women and I was involved in the writing and editing of the "Legal Reforms and Provisions" portion of the final report.