Researching Teenage Girls and Schooling in Malaysia: Bridging theoretical issues of gender identity, culture, ethnicity and education

This paper describes 'Malaysian' teenage schoolgirls' representations of their female identity presented through a school essay. These girls' writings indicate that they express multiple and often contradictory identities in their attempts to reconcile their present and projected personal and social roles. While there are emerging themes common to all these girls, there are also differences in the details of self-inscription given by the Malay, Chinese and Indian girls. Moreover, within each of these categories there is also difference. Drawing on contemporary feminist theorisations and current conceptualisations of Malaysian society as multicultural and multiethnic, these girls' self-inscriptions provide a basis for an initial theorisation of the Malaysian experience of being a teenage schoolgirl framed by the intersectionalities of culture, ethnicity and religion. Based on these initial findings, I argue that research on the nature of gendered identity among Malaysian girls must move away from hegemonic conceptualisations of it, most often located within Eurocentric as well as male-centric academic discourses. I also examine the possibility of a Malaysian poststructuralist feminism which discounts essentialism. The multiplicities of the notion of a 'Malaysian' girl/woman is debated in this context. The interweaving of homogeneity and difference between and within the Malaysian discursive fields within which teenage girls are located is addressed as a stepping off point for this exploration.