“I don’t remember when it happened to me. I don’t know the details either—of who did it, where they did it, or what they used. All I know is the pain of knowing that my body had been permanently altered without my consent…My scars are physical, psychological and emotional.”

These searing words are from a Singaporean survivor of Female Genital Cutting (FGC), the term for removal of any or all of the visible clitoris/clitoral hood but which also refers to any genital disfigurement carried out for non-medical reasons.

More than three in four Muslim women in Singapore have suffered from some form of FGC. These are unofficial numbers—there is no formal research on the practice here—from surveys conducted by independent researchers, and movements like End Female Genital Cutting Singapore (EFS). I co-founded EFS in 2020, shocked into action after realising how prevalent genital cutting was in my own social circle.

The fight to end FGC is part of a larger ongoing battle for female autonomy, equality and equity here. The establishment likes to tout Singapore’s consistent presence among the top 10 nations for gender equality, high female participation in the workforce and its excellent public safety record. Good. But these dazzling numbers should not blind us to the multifarious ways in which the promise of autonomy and equality continues to be violated. This was why EFS was part of a group of NGOs representing Singapore, alongside government agencies, at the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in Geneva earlier this year.

One of the United Nations’ nine core human rights treaties, CEDAW, has served as an international bill of rights for women since the United Nations General Assembly adopted it in 1979. By ratifying CEDAW, countries commit to taking measures to abolish discriminatory laws, incorporate gender equality in their legal systems, establish protection mechanisms for women, and eliminate all acts of discrimination against them. Signatories are “judged” on compliance with the treaty’s 30 articles every few years; their reports are submitted alongside “shadow reports” from local NGOs, allowing the CEDAW committee to interrogate any disconnects between official, usually triumphalist, narratives and those put forth by civil society.

Singapore signed CEDAW in 1995, but at the same time, rejected several key articles. In 2004, it withdrew its objections to Article 9, which called upon signatories to delink women’s nationalities from their husbands’, and give them equal rights with men when it came to their children’s citizenship rights. In April that year, the Singapore Parliament passed a constitutional amendment such that for the first time since independence, overseas-born children could acquire Singapore citizenship by descent from their Singaporean mothers. It was a historic moment, raising hopes for even more enlightened legislation that would make Singapore fully compliant with CEDAW requirements.

Those hopes have not fructified. In the two decades since, Singapore has refused to ratify three key articles that implore signatories to remove, among other things, all discrimination against women in the workplace (Article 11), give them the same inheritance rights as men and ensure absolute equality within a marriage (Articles 2 and 16). In its official report to CEDAW this year, the government cited, as it has for decades, the “personal and religious rights of minorities” under the Administration of Muslim Law Act to justify the latter two. But what if those within the minority want change?

With political will, minority women’s rights can be woven into the social fabric.

That’s precisely the point Beyond the Hijab (BTH) and Musawah made in their shadow reports. Muslim women should have the right to marry of their own accord, without permission from male guardians. They don’t. They should have equal divorce rights. They don’t. Polygamy should be banned, and the rule prohibiting the marriage of Muslim girls before they turn 18 enforced. They’re not. BTH also highlighted the limited powers and jurisdiction of the Shari’ah courts, and how the lax enforcement and understaffing has provided a loophole for some men to delay divorce proceedings. There are only three mediators, two registrars, three Presidents, and one Senior President currently serving at the Shari’ah Court. Local legal practitioners have cited concerns over the three-month postponements each time an adjournment is granted at mediation or at a hearing, due to scarcity of mediators, registrars and presidents. Such delays affect access to justice and have disproportionate impacts on women who are often the primary caretakers of children, and who may have difficulty in finding and maintaining employment while going through protracted divorce proceedings.

Today, Muslim women in Singapore have no choice but to follow the direction set by the Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (MUIS), or the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore, the umbrella body whose goal is to “set the Islamic agenda, shape religious life and forge the Singaporean Muslim Identity”. However, not all of the more than 230,000 Muslim women in Singapore may align with MUIS’s positions on religious matters.

In Geneva, during discussions on Singapore’s incomplete ratification, a CEDAW committee member cut to the chase: “Will the State allow Muslim women to choose if they want to be governed under civil or Shari’ah law?” There is precedent to borrow from other countries. The Indian Special Marriages Act, for instance, permits couples of any faith, including Islam, to marry under civil law. This flexibility ensures that divorce and other legal matters can be addressed according to civil law if desired, reflecting diverse societal needs and preferences. The question arises: is there political will to do this? Or, as Linda M Keller of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law argued in 2014, is Singapore “maintaining its reservations in order to score political points at home with the Muslim minority”?

The idea of autonomy animated the shadow report submitted by the Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (HOME) too. As of June 2024, there are 294,800 migrant domestic workers (MDW) in Singapore, almost all female, since government regulations require special permissions to hire men as domestic workers. Singapore has refused to ratify CEDAW’s Article 11 guaranteeing employment rights, deeming it “unnecessary for the minority of women who do not fall within the ambit of Singapore’s employment legislation”.

This “minority”—well over 10 percent of females, resident and non-resident, in the workforce—is vulnerable to both employer and state authority. Employers can unilaterally revoke work passes, with MDWs having no recourse to the Employment Claims Tribunal. Unlike the more capacious Employment Act that governs working conditions for most professionals, MDWs fall under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act that lacks essential labour rights such as limits on work hours, compensation for overtime, as well as annual and medical leave. Even the recent mandatory monthly day off bestowed on them is not defined as 24 continuous hours, meaning that they may still be required to perform household chores before or after their designated rest period. They are “not allowed” to get pregnant; immediate repatriation is guaranteed, with a possible ban on working in Singapore again. Abortion is prohibitively expensive for most, forcing them to head to nearby Batam in Indonesia for the procedure or scout the illegal drug market for pills.

These are appalling restrictions on women who clean our homes, cook our meals, and provide care to our aged as well as our children. The irony is that the government touts levy concessions for working Singaporean women who hire MDWs to acknowledge the disproportionate caregiving burden placed on them. Relieve a privileged class of women by bringing in a less privileged one; give the latter moth-eaten rights. It’s essentially labour rights arbitrage. As HOME advocated to CEDAW, Singapore must improve working conditions of MDWs through inclusion under the Employment Act, and the right to form their own association and trade unions.

Sayoni, an NGO that seeks to uphold rights for queer women, focused on the Employment Act as well, calling upon the government to expand it to include Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex (LBTI+) women. Unsurprisingly, this group was completely missing from the official submission to CEDAW, even as Sayoni’s shadow report found entrenched structural discrimination against them in the workplace, and virtually all other parts of society. Existing workplace fairness legislation excludes LBTI+ persons, denying them legal safeguards against discrimination available to other groups. Meanwhile, the Infocomm Media Development Authority continues to categorise LGBTQ representations in the media alongside paedophilia, bestiality, incest, necrophilia, and sexual violence.

In 2022, the government unveiled a White Paper on Singapore Women’s Development, with the promise of helping create a society in which men and women “partner each other as equals, and both can pursue their aspirations freely and to the fullest.” It’s a laudable aspiration. But it must include all women in Singapore—those who would rather follow civic rather than religious norms; those who are here to improve lives, theirs and ours; and those who have yet to make their way from society’s periphery to its centre. In addition, conversations centred on sex education, respect for boundaries, erasure of stereotypes, measures to combat gender-based violence and trauma counselling have to be prioritised if women are to live their lives “freely and to the fullest.”

This was why there were 17 of us: 17 civil society organisations who submitted 17 shadow reports to CEDAW; and 10 of us who argued over how to divide the cumulative 10 minutes we had been allotted to make an oral presentation to the CEDAW committee in Geneva. Our lively debates there were a microcosm of the tensions civil society faces in our fledgling democracy—for instance, to what extent should politicians be involved in government-organised NGOs (so-called GONGOs), and how to achieve compromise between NGOs of varying sizes, endowments, ideological inclinations, and levels of independence from the state. Even as we continue to navigate these inherent tensions, it’s heartening that we had a seat at the table at CEDAW. 

We will continue arguing, fighting, pleading, coaxing, organising until our physical, psychological and emotional scars have healed. Until we belong.

List of Resources

Saza Faradilla is a co-founder of End Female Genital Cutting Singapore, which envisions a world where the practice of FGC is obsolete. She raises awareness on social media and on-the-ground, and participates in local and international lobbying to bring attention to the fact that FGC is a pressing concern in Asia. Saza is currently an Advocacy Fellow at Girls Inc Chicago. She can be found on Instagram @endfgcsg and @disazaster

Letters in response to this piece can be sent to sudhir@jom.media. All will be considered for publication on our “Letters to the editor” page.

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