Singlehood Phenomenon: Understanding Professional Sarawak Malay Women

Abstract

This conceptual paper is aimed to highlight the phenomenon of single professional Malay women in Sarawak. Changes in marital trends and family life in Malaysia and other South East Asian countries do not mirror those that have occurred in the west. Much of the research on single women in the west has only looked at singles based on their ‘civil status’ and failed to distinguish between single women who have never married and women who are divorced, widowed, separated or cohabitating. One of the most common explanations for being single is the concept of Jodoh and Qada and Qadar, it brings the same meaning to some of the metaphorical statements such as: “Things happened for reasons”, “Blessing in disguise”, “Wisdom behind it”, “kun faya kun' (what will be will be). The first section of this paper will review literatures on the concept of singlehood among Malays including the western and eastern concept of womanhood. This section will elaborate on some common reasons for not marrying and being single. The second part of this article focuses on the reflections of why singleness matter among Malays. The intent is to comprehend some explanations based on the experience to the question: “why are they not married?” and set out to understand “what went wrong?” This paper thus highlights the phenomenon of not married or singlehood among Sarawak Malay in the shifting, developing and post-colonial Sarawak and Malaysian society.