Dr M: Men and women should not be too ‘equal’

© Provided by The Malay Mail Online Tun Dr Mahathir believes that men and women should not attempt ‘to be equal in every way’. — File picThere should be limits to the gender equality currently being sought to enable the sexes to be differentiated, former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said yesterday.

Dr Mahathir, 90, said that men and women should not attempt “to be equal in every way” as they have different God-given physical attributes, with men not being able to give birth and women similarly facing other physical constraints.

“Let us not try to be so equal that today looking from the back, you don’t know whether it is a man or woman, they all have long hair, even the dress doesn’t give away the gender. So let’s be different in some ways - hair, clothing, dresses, et cetera.

“So that it’s less likely for men to be chasing after someone only to find that he is of the same gender,” he said in a speech at the Perdana Leadership Foundation building.

He pointed out that men are also known to be not as tender and kind as women, saying that these differences should be maintained so that the latter can mitigate the quality of society.

Earlier in his speech, he said that humans may in the future successfully clone humans and do away with the role of women as child-bearers, but said the method of scrapping stem cells for the cloning process is “not fun”.

While acknowledging that certain living creatures can reproduce without requiring male and female counterparts, Dr Mahathir indicated he did not wish the same to happen to humans, stating: “I hope I will never see that in my life”.

In the same speech, Dr Mahathir praised the success of women in outshining the men in work that is traditionally confined to the latter.

Dr Mahathir was speaking at an event where his wife launched the book titled “Women Leaders in Malaysian Academia – Women Chancellors, Pro-Chancellors & Vice-Chancellors of Malaysian Universities 1957 – Present”.

The book was produced jointly by the Perdana Leadership Foundation - of which Dr Mahathir is honorary president - and by the Multimedia University (MMU), which Dr Siti Hasmah has served as chancellor from 1997 to 2012.