A Path To Equality In Malaysia

What Barriers Will  Malaysian Women Break Through Next?

Fozia Amanulla been accustomed to negotiating a deal with the pressure of millions of dollars during his career in the field of Islamic finance. Some things, though, she never used. For example, how certain man have refused to shake her hands, ignored her when she has spoken or refused to look at her across   a conference table.

At a meeting with a client in Saudi Arabia, where men and women are usually segregated in public life, she was the only woman in the building, the fact reinforced by the absence of toilets for women.

Ms. Fozia, one of the first woman to lead an Islamic bank in Malaysia, has no shortage of reminders that this industry, where investments are made in accordance with the principles of Islam is a male-dominated.

But while some women in the corners of the more conservative Islamic world is still fighting for the right to work outside the home in the booming Islamic finance sector, Malaysia multiplying the number of female faces.

And industry observers say it is a because of Malaysia's multicultural, women have made a major breakthrough.

Roll call of achievements of women in this Southeast Asian nation's wounds in almost all aspects of the sector from  bank chief executives and scholars of Syariah, or Islamic law, for regulators like Zeti Akhtar Aziz, governor of the central bank, which is widely credited with playing a major role in changing Kuala Lumpur become a hub for Islamic banking.

In fact, many women are currently involved in the Malaysian industry has risen through the ranks of conventional financial sector when they feel the pull of Islam sector , rapidly evolving global industry that estimated to be worth about $ 1 trillion in value this year.

Raja Teh Maimunah Raja Abdul Aziz,  is an investment banker before joining the Islamic banks in Malaysia and the Middle East. That decision eventually led to her last year appointed as global head of Islamic market in Bursa Malaysia, the country's stock market.

Women rising in the ranks of the industry in other countries too, including Britain, which also hinted his desire to become a hub of Islamic finance. But when it comes to countries with predominantly Muslim, Malaysian women win hands down, with the lead pack Jamelah Jamaluddin.

Ms. Jamelah was appointed director of RHB Islamic Bank in Malaysia in 2007 and is believed to have become the world's first woman to head an Islamic bank. Her appointment to the top job at Malaysian arm of Kuwait Finance House early this year was the first time a Gulf-owned  Islamic bank has appointed a women head.

Ms. Fozia, for his part, has been appointed head of Eoncap Islamic Bank in 2007 after leading the Islamic debt capital markets division at AseamBankers, now known as Maybank Investment Bank, for three years.

She said the traditional male domination of this industry means that women have faced greater challenges. And the success of Malaysian women, she believes, comes largely from the fact that no public separation of men and women in this country.

Nevertheless, Engku Rabiah Adawiah, the first woman Syariah adviser registered with the Securities Commission of Malaysia and Islamic scholar at the central bank's and the only female National Syariah Advisory Council, said that when she first began attending industry conferences, she is the only woman among the speakers.

Now, she said, more women could be seen at events like that, and she expects the presence of women in the industry to continue to grow. Three-quarters of the students she taught at the International Islamic University Malaysia are women.

Malaysian women are always active in trade and commerce, so that's not something  culturally  odd for women to be at the forefront.

Women and Pain

Do women have a higher pain tolerance than men?

   Some people suppose that, because they are able to bear children, women have a higher pain tolerance than men do. However, several studies do not support this theory. A study at the Pain Management Unit of the University of Bath reported that women feel more pain in their lifetimes and that they feel pain for longer durations than men do. One experiment involved men and women submerging their arms in ice water. In that experiment, women had a lower pain threshold and lower tolerance for pain than men did [Source: Live Science].

   Women's brains also respond a little differently to pain than men's brains do. There is considerable overlap in the areas of the brain that respond to pain and stress, but women's limbic centers become active in addition to these areas. The limbic center is responsible for a person's emotions, so this suggests that women are likely to have emotional responses to pain and stress. Researchers theorize that this is because of the traditional gender role of women as caregivers [Source: Science Daily].

   Does Barbie really make women hate their bodies? In 1995, researchers at the University of Arizona studied how African-American and Caucasian girls viewed their bodies [Source: University of Arizona]. They asked teenaged girls to describe their own bodies as well as what a perfect girl would look like. African-American girls were reluctant to assign physical traits to an ideal girl, but Caucasian girls gave roughly the same description. Their idea of an ideal girl was 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighed about 100 pounds and had long hair. Researchers called this description "a living manifestation of a Barbie doll" [Source: Quindlen].

   Some researchers have used this as evidence that Barbie dolls encourage women to strive to have bodies that are unattainable. Some say Barbie is responsible for breast implants and eating disorders. However, there hasn't been a large-scale study directly linking playing with Barbie dolls to low self-esteem or increased eating disorders. There haven't been any studies proving that girls want to look like Barbie dolls, either. In fact, a 2005 British study revealed that girls often deface or mutilate their Barbie dolls while leaving their other toys unharmed [Source: Live Science].

  However, one study has suggested that toys with unattainable proportions might affect a person's self-image. But the study didn't involve Barbie -- it involved male subjects and Ken dolls as well as action figures like the Hulk and G.I. Joe. The men in the study reported a more negative self image after playing with hyper-muscular action figures than after playing with Ken [Source: Sex Roles: A Journal of Research]. If playing with a toy can affect men in this way, it may affect women similarly.

   Doctors and scientists are still discovering other similarities and differences in men and women, and they've made some surprising discoveries. For example, after World War II, pharmaceutical companies feared that drug tests could harm pregnant women and that women's hormones could affect test results. So, they tested drugs primarily on men. But in the last several years, the medical community has discovered that women and men often have different responses to drugs. For this reason, human trials of new drugs include both men and women [Source: The Science of Sex and Gender in Human Health].

Facts you need to know about Women

How Women Work.............

     If you believe what you see on TV, women are inscrutable, conniving, hysterical and apt to change their minds without reason or warning. Some women's magazines perpetuate these stereotypes by offering advice on how to entrap men or keep them guessing. And some of the basic differences between men and women can seem a little confusing, depending on your point of view. So it's not surprising that one of the most requested articles in the history of HowStuffWorks is "How Women Work."

    The irony is that from conception until the eighth week of gestation, men and women are almost exactly the same. The only difference is at the chromosomal level, deep inside the embryos' cells. Inside every cell of a person's body, DNA is tightly wound into pairs of structures called chromosomes. One pair of chromosomes determines whether the person is male or female. Except in the case of extremely rare abnormalities, a person with two X chromosomes is female, and a person with one X chromosome and one Y chromosome is male. For a few weeks, these chromosomes are all that differentiates male embryos from female embryos.

     Of course, by the time an embryo has grown into an adult wo man, many attributes make her different from a man. On average, women are shorter and smaller than men are, although women have a higher percentage of body fat. Women have reproductive organs that can support a developing baby and nourish it after its birth. Their blood pressure is lower, and their heart beats faster, even when they're asleep [Source: FDA]. Women also have faster blood flow to their brains and lose less brain tissue as they age than men do [Source: Psychology Today].

     And then, of course, there are hormones, which a lot of people view as a huge difference between men and women. But every person's body, whether it's male or female, uses hormones to regulate and control a wide range of processes. Hormones are the products of the endocrine system, which includes numerous glands located in various parts of the body. For example, two well-known hormones are adrenaline, which comes from the adrenal gland, and insulin, which comes from the pancreas. These and other hormones are vital to the lives and health of both men and women. To learn more about the endocrine system, watch this ADAM animation.

     Sex hormones, on the other hand, work a little differently in men's and women's bodies. In men, the testes produce the hormone testosterone, which regulates sperm production and causes masculine secondary sex characteristics. In women, the ovaries produce hormones like estrogen and progesterone, which regulate reproductive processes. Men's bodies convert a little testosterone into estrogen, and women's bodies make small amounts of testosterone, so neither hormone is exclusive to one sex or the other.

     A man's testosterone levels can fluctuate throughout the day as his body regulates its production of sperm. But a woman's sex hormone levels fluctuate as part of her reproductive cycle, which takes about a month to complete. During a woman's childbearing years, the recurring changes in her hormone levels can cause symptoms like irritability and moodiness, known as premenstrual syndrome (PMS). When a woman reaches perimenopause, her body slows down its production of sex hormones. During the process, her levels of estrogen and progesterone can vary significantly, causing symptoms like hot flashes and trouble sleeping.

     Sex hormones can affect a woman's emotions and physiology throughout most of her life. But contrary to some people's perceptions, they're not responsible for every facet of her behavior. In this article, we'll look at some other common perceptions and stereotypes about women as we examine how they work.