WOMEN PARTICIPATION IN WOMEN’S NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS

Abstract

Women’s NGOs in Sarawak plays a substantial role to provide a unique opportunity for leaders in gender equality and women’s empowerment to influence the United Nation’s agenda. This includes advocating the human rights of women and girls and supports the United Nations’ consensus documents such as the Beijing Platform for Action, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and other UN agreements such as the Declaration on Population and Development and the Vienna Declaration on Human Rights.This study revealed that the factors that motivate women’s participation in women’s NGOs are to contribute and serve the society, to gain knowledge and skills, to develop networking, to enhance career path and to develop self-esteem. Meanwhile factors that hinders women for being actively involved in women’s NGOs are lack of time due to their focus on family and house matters, men still think that women can’t do what men can do, lack of awareness on benefits in joining the women’s NGOs, limited access to knowledge on NGOs and women feel intimidate and not confident to be socialize in NGOs