This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on March 27, 2023 - April 2, 2023

For decades, countries around the world have had active conversations on closing the education and gender gaps in industries related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Although on the surface it doesn’t appear to be so, Malaysia has proved to be significantly more progressive than some developed economies when it comes to the involvement of women in STEM. A 2021 World Bank Group (WBG) Country Gender Note on Malaysia stated that the country had performed very well, with girls outnumbering boys in all fields of study except engineering, manufacturing and construction.

When compared to selected Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, Malaysia’s enrolment ratio for engineering courses is 45% female, versus an enrolment rate of 17.6% to 21.8% for the UK, the US and Canada. The issue isn’t that women are not interested in enrolling for STEM-related courses, they just didn’t stay the course to work in STEM-related jobs.

Zeroing in on Southeast Asia, despite the narrowing gender gap in education, the educational achievements of women are not translating into jobs, according to a United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific report titled South-East Asia: An Analysis of the Beijing+25 Review Reports.

In an interview with Digital Edge in November last year, Jill Finlayson, director for expanding diversity and gender equity in tech at the University of California, said that when it comes to involving women in the tech workforce, Malaysia, at 35%, is doing slightly better than the US, which has been struggling to go beyond the 25% mark as women are leaving the tech workforce at twice the rate of men.

According to Academy of Sciences Malaysia’s Analytics 2022 report, women account for 30% of the world’s researchers, of whom 28% are in STEM. In 2015, there were more than 55% of women researchers in the government sector, followed by higher education (50%) and business (more than 30%). Although there isn’t any recent data on this, a cursory glance at the institutions of higher education show that women dominate this field.

Malaysia’s university life is somewhat balanced gender-wise. According to a 2019 WBG Breaking Barriers report, students of both genders have access to the same opportunities, take part in the same activities and are encouraged to give their best.

Female students generally feel supported by academic staff, regardless of whether they study traditional subjects or in more male-dominated fields like engineering, microbiology or IT. Nevertheless, many female students feel that male students have a different attitude towards leisure time — in particular, they feel that while female students must concentrate on their studies and spend a lot of time learning new materials, male students can enjoy a more relaxed university life and still get good grades.

Several years ago, a study was conducted on the amount of academic service performed by female versus male faculty members and the results were published in a paper titled “Faculty Service Loads and Gender: Are Women Taking Care of the Academic Family?” (Guarino and Borden, 2016). Based on data from more than 140 institutions, women faculty members performed significantly more services than men, with controls for rank, ethnicity and department.

Jessica Ooi, a PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus studying the development of a paper-based device for colorimetric detection of ovarian cancer, says this raises the question: “Did this occur because superiors considered female academics to be more capable/reliable to get the job done or were women more likely to accept additional responsibilities compared with their male counterparts when asked?

“Even if a woman knows she is capable of performing an ‘extracurricular’ task, empowerment is also as simple as being able [and allowed] to say ‘no’ to extra tasks/projects that deviate from one’s main vision and mission without being judged or penalised down the road. Perhaps this way, more women would have time to really deepen their expertise and take their research to greater heights.”

Having been in the STEM industry for close to a decade, Dr Aini Hasanah Abd Mutalib, a primatologist and research officer at the Institute of Tropical Biodiversity and Sustainable Development, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, says when it comes to Malaysian women’s involvement in STEM, the landscape is evolving.

“It is worth addressing that women have many roles, not only career-wise. I often look at my mother and other female colleagues and think that they are really super women for wearing that many hats. It’s not easy to juggle everything day to day,” she says.

“Providing enough stipend and leave, especially for maternity, could indeed increase the productivity of women, in addition to paternity leave for husbands as a support to the wife.”

There is definitely a lack of female role models in tech and innovation in Malaysia but it is also a global issue, says Ooi. She says that in this country, a lot of emphasis is placed on exam performance, hence the education system perpetuates mainly the passing down of knowledge but not the creation of it. On top of that, while the grouping of students into arts and science streams has its merits, what it really lacks is vocational skills.

“During my attachment funded by the Merdeka Award Trust, I was privileged to interact with not only many outstanding female scientists, but also women working in well-paying jobs I have not seen in Malaysia before. Here, most people prefer to study law, medicine, pharmacy, business, dentistry and accountancy, among others. But what happens if your intelligence and skill set do not fit these jobs?

“[From] my experience abroad, standardised exams should not be the only metric used in education. And if academic intelligence is not a child’s forte, they have other options like taking up vocational skills or joining an apprenticeship with companies. I think we need to approach education differently by encouraging problem-solving and creativity. We can learn from countries like Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany, just to name a few.”

Malaysia can be a beacon for women in tech by providing an inclusive and supportive environment. Aini says men can play a role in this by being aware of the challenges women face in tech, such as unconscious bias or lack of productivity in career growth.

“Men can help by providing and supporting mentorship, collaboration and guidance, and use their position for more inclusion and diversity in the workplace, especially tech-wise. Organisations and companies can play a part by including women in decision-making, providing flexible working arrangements and building a safe culture for women at work that will highlight inclusion and diversity,” she adds.

Nevertheless, these women have worked through the gender gap and challenges present in STEM and are past recipients of the Merdeka Award Grant, a prestigious award that honours the outstanding work and achievements that have made an impact on the nation while providing an avenue to engage in short-term collaborative projects/programmes anywhere in the world. Here are their individual stories.

Ovarian cancer afflicts more than 300,000 women a year worldwide. When this cancer is limited to the ovaries in stage 1, up to 90% of patients can recover with the currently available treatment. And for stage 2, up to 70% survive for more than 10 years. With further spread over the surface of the abdominal cavity (stage 3) or outside the abdomen (stage 4), long-term survival is reduced to 20% or lower. Only 25% to 30% of patients are currently diagnosed at stage 1 or 2.

Unfortunately, this type of cancer is quite easy to miss in the early stages because the symptoms are quite vague. Jessica Ooi, a PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus studying the development of a paper-based device for colorimetric detection of ovarian cancer biomarker miRNA-665, lost a friend to ovarian cancer at a young age because of late detection. This gave her the impetus to choose ovarian cancer detection as her PhD field of study.

“[Symptoms] could be just bloating, abdominal pain, constipation, back pain and/or early satiety. So, the problem is most women would dismiss this as something normal and not seek medical attention. This is especially true for people in rural areas or from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, because to get tested means taking time off work and travelling to a bigger town with better healthcare facilities,” says Ooi.

The current testing approach involves collecting blood from a patient, sending the sample to the lab and measuring the levels of a biomarker called CA125. This is not specific to ovarian cancer nor is it very sensitive, says Ooi, meaning that it is possible to misdiagnose someone who doesn’t actually have cancer but has endometriosis or some other condition instead. The diagnosis isn’t confirmed until an ultrasound or biopsy is done.

Thus, a rapid test would help because it could be deployed to rural areas or settings without access to laboratory equipment, where the results can be given in 30 minutes to an hour (instead of being sent to a centralised lab for analysis) and therefore facilitate mass screening.

“This would enable earlier detection of ovarian cancer, regardless of access to healthcare or socioeconomic background. The ultimate aim is for these methods to produce rapid results at the point-of-care but are affordable and accessible to all women. As an analogy, imagine something much like the current Covid-19 test kits but for cancer,” Ooi explains.

A pharmacist by training, she is happy to see the pharmaceutical industry evolving, with the awareness of biological differences between males and females growing steadily. This has a huge impact on how diseases can manifest differently in men and women and this knowledge helps to improve treatment.

“In the past, clinical trials for drug testing involved mostly male participants, which led to drug dosages being decided based on the male metabolism. As a result, female patients have been found to be overmedicated and in fact, experienced adverse events nearly twice as often as male patients,” says Ooi.

She adds that there are more research grants/awards for women now than in the past, such as the Merdeka Award Grant for International Attachment and L’oreal-Unesco for Women in Science awards. These help inspire young girls to explore careers in research and also recognise women scientists for their contribution to science.

“I definitely foresee more women joining [the industry], and I hope they find good mentors to work with throughout their career and perhaps even become Nobel laureates one day,” says Ooi.

Dr Aini Hasanah Abd Mutalib started researching primates, specifically orangutans, in 2015. Using an unmanned aerial vehicle or drone, she measured the nest characteristics of the orangutan.

After completing her PhD, Aini worked at Universiti Malaysia Terengganu’s Institute of Tropical Biodiversity and Sustainable Development. Here, she undertook a research project in the Kenyir rainforest using bioacoustics (the study of the production, transmission and reception of animal sounds) to measure the forest’s health, specifically listening for the sound of the gibbon.

Aini decided to focus on the sound of the primate because she has a visual disability. More importantly, she is pushing the boundaries of her research and is setting an example to show that people, especially scientists, are not only able to use their visual skills, but their auditory skills as well.

“The gibbon is an elusive species of primates, but their singing can be loudly heard in the rainforest when they mark their territory and perform duets with their partner too. This is their unique feature, and bioacoustics help us to locate them,” she explains.

When Aini was still working on her PhD, she and her colleagues started a non-governmental organisation, the Malaysian Primatological Society, to focus on primate research and conservation on the ground by providing environmental education for local outreach and building a network among various stakeholders, both locally and globally.

Like the adage, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour”, they started small in 2015, with the aspiration of building a representative society of primatologists in Malaysia, given that the primate diversity here is quite rich (26 species, to be exact).

“[This year,] we will organise an international primate conservation congress, bringing together more than 500 primatologists from around the world to Kuching, Sarawak. We have come a long way, even though we are still a humble NGO, working together for primate conservation in Malaysia,” says Aini.

In the wildlife or primate conservation field, there isn’t much space for gender bias as the community is small and everyone leans on each other, she points out. However, within the conservation space, it is important for women scientists to have a sense of security, which includes gaining support from other women as well.

“The industry is growing beyond gender and orientation expression [and adapting to] the principle of diversity, equity and inclusion. In terms of employment, the research and development space is pioneered by women in Malaysia,” says Aini.

“I would definitely think [more women would join this field]. My hope is that we remember our objectives in our field. With innovation and technological advancements, together we can achieve our purpose and mission in our respective fields. Faith is a long-term game and along the way, despite any disappointments, it will get us to where we want to be.

“Conservation is not rocket science as it goes beyond the definition of a single field. We need ecologists, biologists, geographers, social scientists, historians, science policy advocates and many other people to fill in knowledge gaps and solve challenges.”

Aini is planning to venture into bioacoustics and small ape/gibbon studies and dive deeper into what can be done to protect the species and their habitats. She is one of five recipients of the Merdeka Award Grant for International Attachment, which will enable her to start her research attachment at the K. Lisa Yang Center of Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University in New York. She also received seed funding from the American Society of Primatologists to start her project: “Saving Primates Where They Live and from Wildlife Acoustics”.

Malaysia has an abundance of unexplored inedible micro and macro algae species, with its potential yet to be unleashed. Dr Zetty Norhana Balia Yusof, an associate professor at the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, is a biotechnologist who studied oil palm when she did her master’s degree, specifically in molecular biology, where she looked at genes, DNA, gene expression and proteins. This was when she was introduced to all kinds of plants, microalgae as well as algae-related research.

“I wanted to see how [algae] can be used as, perhaps, an alternative source of antifungal applications because our oil palm industry is heavily affected by a fungal infection caused by a species called Ganoderma Boninense. The industry often uses synthetic chemicals and fungicides, which are obviously known to be harmful to the environment,” says Zetty.

“So, as a plant/algae scientist, I am looking at how we can actually utilise whatever that’s available out there and other greener solutions that are environmentally friendly. I am trying to identify the potential of the bioactivities of all these naturally abundant seaweeds and to see how it can try to kill the fungus that is causing the disease.”

In the lab, she tried and tested the seaweed extracts on actual plants and from there, she designed a formulation that can be utilised in the oil palm industry. Even though they are inedible, they have high potential to be biofertilisers, an antifungal source or even an anticancer agent, which she is also testing.

“Initially, I just wanted to explore the potential of microalgae and seaweed, but we have gone deeper and are at the stage where we have managed to prove its potential. We’re actually moving towards formulation, coming up with the product and even coming out with a company to, perhaps, commercialise this product one day soon,” says Zetty.

Having been an academic for almost two decades, she observes that most of the scientists or researchers, as well as lecturers, in the field are women. In the areas of research, teaching and academia, it is their personal performance that gets them to the top.

“In fact, most scientists whom I look up to here in Malaysia are actually women and I have really high respect for women in STEM and tech. So, involvement-wise, I think we are doing way better and, of course, we are just getting better at doing it,” says Zetty.

“Seaweed cultivation heavily involves women and now that I have explored more species that may be useful for various purposes, maybe we can even have an industry that will produce this seaweed of interest, which will then, hopefully, boost the economic status of communities, especially women in coastal areas.”

Zetty hopes there will be more brave and optimistic women coming forward to willingly pick up the challenges of their generation. STEM and tech grants are already available, although it would be better if there were more, especially for younger women.

“As I have passed the 40 [year old] mark, we tend to see fewer opportunities. But perhaps that means we are supposed to be standing on our own already and giving back and being mentors to younger women scientists and that could actually be a good approach where we can implement something like that,” she says.

“I am all about empowering women. I started organising programmes for undergraduate students, especially girls, to go abroad to universities in Thailand, for example, to do mobility programmes and to work on short research attachments, so that they can explore and experience different environments, adapt to different conditions, as well as be ambassadors for Malaysia.

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