The changing outlook of young women in southeast Asia

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In marketing and advertising, Muslim women tend to be depicted as homemakers or as carefree young hijabis chasing the latest (modest) fashion and (halal) beauty trends.

It’s high time for more realistic portrayals of Muslim women: as mothers and wives, yes, but also as students, workers, entrepreneurs, politicians and activists.

Muslim women are making headlines. In Iran, young women protested in schools and in universities after the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, detained by the morality police for not satisfactorily covering her hair. The protesters’ chants could not be more evocative: “Woman, life, freedom”.

In Afghanistan, women and girls took to the streets after a suicide attack on ethnic Hazara students sitting for a practice university entrance exam in Kabul.

If it seems like a moment, it is. They’re saying they have had enough of discrimination and inequality imposed by men in the name of religion. They want their basic rights – to education, to matters of marriage and divorce, to participate in public life and to cover or uncover their hair. They’re risking life and limb to do it.

In southeast Asia, Muslim women have far greater freedoms than women in the Middle East. Indonesia has had a female president; Malaysia has a woman chief justice and women play a large role in public life, from academia to business to entertainment.

Yet there remain challenges. In Malaysia, women have made up more than 60% of university students since the 2000s. Yet women comprised just 13.5% of candidates in national elections in November 2022. Clearly, there’s a gap between ability and achievement, between expectation and opportunity.

Our report, The New Muslim Consumer, in collaboration with Wunderman Thompson Jakarta and VMLY&R Muslim Intel Lab Kuala Lumpur, explored how men and women feel about changing gender roles.

In May 2022, we surveyed 1,000 Muslim respondents across Indonesia and Malaysia (see grey boxout, below). We found that 42% of women say they provide the most financial support in their household, yet most brand communications for financial products and services continue to focus on men.

In recent years, debates over a woman’s place in Islam have spilled out from the rarefied confines of Islamic universities and scholarly organisations into the public sphere, thanks to social media.

As gender relations shift, businesses and brands have an opportunity to champion women – and young women in particular. It could be as simple as switching things up – for example, targeting women for financial products and men for kitchen cleaners, or depicting more women making decisions in the boardroom.

Businesses could also voice their support for young women who are protesting injustice, the same way they might pledge to fight climate change or racial discrimination – even if it risks hurting their bottom line.

Chen May Yee is Asia-Pacific director at Wunderman Thompson Intelligence

This article was first published in Impact magazine.