“Wanita” in Parliaments: The attitude of Malaysian MPs towards women

In this project, I study the temporal changes in the linguistic usage of gender labels in terms of frequency and semantic meaning using the transcripts of parliamentary debates in Malaysia from 1990 to 2020. I find that in contrast to the male labels, the occurrence of female labels has generally at a higher level after 2001 with the word wanita being the most used label. Despite the noticeable frequency-based changes, I find insignificant variations in the semantic meaning of both gender labels over time. Furthermore, I also leverage word embeddings to quantify gender stereotypes against females in respect of personal traits and occupations. The result suggests that both types of stereotypes have become less prominent over time.