On this episode of #TheFutureIsFemale Melisa Idris speaks with Dr Vilashini Somiah, Senior Lecturer with the Gender Studies Programme, at Universiti Malaya’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dr Vila was recently elected the 2026-2028 Chair of the Southeast Asia Council at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) in the US. The AAS is the governing body of the world’s largest academic organisation dedicated to Asian Studies, and Dr Vila is the first-ever Southeast Asian scholar based in Southeast Asia to chair Southeast Asia Council since the Council's founding in 1970.
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00:00Hello and good evening. I'm Melissa Idris. Welcome to The Future is Female. This is the show where we
00:16find the extraordinary in every woman. I'm delighted to introduce my guest today, Dr.
00:21Vilashini Somaya, who is a Senior Lecturer with the Gender Studies Program at University Malaya's
00:27Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She was recently elected the 2026 Chair of the Southeast
00:34Asia Council at the Association for Asian Studies in the US. The AAS is the governing body of the
00:41world's largest academic organisations dedicated to Asian studies. Dr. Vilashini is the first ever
00:47Southeast Asian scholar based in Southeast Asia to chair the Southeast Asia Council since the
00:53Council's founding in 1970. So it's an honour to have her here. Welcome to the show. Thank you for
01:00joining me. Thank you for having me, Mel. This is so great. I mean, what an honour. Congratulations,
01:04first of all. Thank you. For this really illustrious appointment. Well, we try. And you know, you
01:12succeeded. And I'm sure it's the first of many hopeful appointments in your career. Thank you.
01:17So kind of you. Well, I've known you for a while now. We've spoken several times. You're a regular
01:24guest on my other show, Consider This. I've always wondered what drew you to gender studies. I've
01:31always wondered what got you interested in anthropology and gender studies and whether you always imagined
01:38yourself working in academia. No. Actually, that's a brilliant question. And to be really candid and
01:43honest, in one's youth, one always imagines themselves a sort of celebrity. Do you remember
01:49MTV? Oh, no. Yeah, I bet the kids don't. Did you want to be an MTV host? I wanted to be an MTV host. I
01:55thought I was made of the stuff of it. And I thought I hardly had to work and I could just listen and
01:59watch music videos all day. But obviously, YouTube ruined that. And in the turn of the millennium. But
02:05I think to really answer your question is that so at this point, I'm sure everybody knows this or many
02:14people know this. But at that point, I come from Sabah. I have an indigenous Sabahan mother. And I have
02:21an Indian father. And I spent most of my childhood in Sabah before we moved to Penang. And really, I think
02:29when Malaysians see themselves in the larger scheme of things, they see themselves in terms of the social
02:34identity they straddle. And I always was told and I understood my position in society at large is
02:42that I occupy a minority identity, right? And I think what a lot of people don't talk about being
02:50a minority is that it's incredibly nuanced. You can be a minority with power, you can be a minority
02:55without, you can be a member of the status quo without power too, right? And these things are
02:59incredibly complicated and complex. But you know, really diving into that was that I saw myself as a person with
03:07very little influence in the world. That didn't bother me. But you know, I think when I finally entered
03:13university, I would say by luck most of the time, because as I said, the plan was to become a superstar. And most
03:21superstars don't go to school, right? But my minority parents said, I'm sorry, we're poor. So you're gonna have to
03:28study, you don't have a choice. And so if all things fail, you'll be a housewife with a degree. And that was a I guess a
03:35pretty decent way of heading forward. And when I entered, I think I was really introduced to a lot of ways in which
03:42high school doesn't inform you of the way in which we talk about the world. Yes, right. And really talking
03:49about the world is seeing yourself in that world. And the fact of the matter is, is that everything informs the
03:57way we see ourselves, right from our gender, to ethnic identity, to the income group that we straddle to
04:04everything, you know, that we, we, we, we, that was a crash course on intersectionality. And I think
04:10really breaking down a lot of these identity markers helped me recognize that there was a lot
04:17that we weren't talking about, right? We talked about, we often talk about Malaysia in the study of
04:22Malaysia, in terms of its policies and its economic growth. But certainly, there was a way of talking
04:28about everyday Malaysians that I didn't have an opportunity to do it. And gender studies and
04:33anthropology, which are the two areas in which I work with, looked at people and what it is that
04:38they were saying rather than what somebody else was saying about them. So, so talk to me about your
04:42research because you focus a lot on marginalised communities with migrants, Bornean women
04:50particularly, and you being mixed heritage yourself. How did that inform where you wanted to take your
04:58work, where you wanted to take your research based on the gaps that you looked, you noticed in
05:03the literature, talk to me a little bit about how you wanted your work to fill those gaps?
05:10You know, I think many of us who are Asian, we come from a legacy in which your mother tells you a lot
05:17about your place in the world, right? I'm no different. I think in what way, in whatever way she could,
05:24she wanted me to inherit a lot of her legacies and before her, her mother. And, and so I, I,
05:31I constantly had an understanding in which I realised I never saw people like my mother or her mother or
05:38the women that I grew up with in the works that I read. And even when, when I was introduced to works
05:44on Borneo, they were often written about, written by Western scholars, right? Or scholars of privilege.
05:50And the lens, therefore, is different. Correct. So it's almost like, you know, reading about yourself
05:55through an uncanny valley lens. It's the same and yet so different, right? There's something that's
06:01not right about what we're reading. Not quite human. It's not quite human. It's almost not quite there.
06:05And I, I really felt that, you know, I, I had great mentors. I had great professors that came before me
06:10that said, you have an opportunity to add to that. And so in many ways, I, I, I gravitated to the work
06:18in Sabah and the kind of women and marginalised communities in Sabah, because we often talk
06:24about them in such disparaging, disprivileged language, right? And if there was a way to also
06:29recognise that there is agency and empowerment amidst quailer, I think that is a real exercise that we
06:36can learn, you know, something to learn from that exercise. That's so true. Sometimes there's this
06:40pity lens that, that, that, that all the, the narrative, the conversations, dialogue, the discourse
06:45is funneled through the, this pity lens, poverty, porn, almost. What then does feminism look like
06:52when it's not shaped by urban centres, by elite perspectives, but through the lived realities of
07:00Bornean women, for example? Sure. I think people get feminism very wrong from this point of view. They
07:06see it then as just a, you know, elevation of women at all costs. And this includes, you know,
07:12disparaging men in that process as well, right? But the feminism that I was introduced to is one
07:18that says there is a capacity for all of us to live in a, in a world where we're equal. And I need to
07:26point this out, not uniform, equal, equality and equity particularly works on different ways. But it's
07:33that everybody feels that they've got something to contribute and that everybody feels that there's
07:37something contributed back to them. And, um, you know, I think especially, um, when we're looking
07:42at this sort of feminism and, you know, the many kinds of feminism, the way in which there are many
07:46kinds of, I don't know, policy studies and people who study political science, right? There are many
07:52ways to approach the study of feminism. The, the ones that, you know, in the way that I'm sort of looking
07:57at it is that there are multicultural, multi-narrative perspectives that all have power to it, right?
08:05And, um, ultimately, this is what I teach. When we look at a place like Sabah, similar in, in areas like
08:12places like, you know, maybe, um, uh, orang asli kampungs scattered throughout Malaya is that we, we have to
08:19pay attention to the fact in which they are, as you said, they cannot constantly be understood from a lens of
08:25the lesser, the other, to be sympathized always, that they are in many ways also trying to empower
08:32themselves. They are trying to achieve agency. We're just not listening to it. And it teaches us
08:36a lot about the ways in which we're talking about other people as well. Right. I, I think the danger
08:42in having this lens of, you know, this, oh, poor them, this charity lens is that you also then, uh,
08:50expect them to always be grateful. Right. You know, there's, there's a trope that we expect
08:54the less advantage or the less privileged to fulfill. And I think the lack of age, we fail
09:01to recognize the lack of agency. Can I, I'm so curious to know how you are going to leverage
09:07your new platform as the, um, in this wonderful prestigious society. Uh, when you've said all
09:14of these things to me, I think it speaks volumes about this growing movement, about decolonizing
09:21academia, really taking back or being empowered to view, um, our community, our society through
09:27our own lens, through the lived realities of our own. How are you going to use this platform,
09:32Vila? I mean, you asked the best questions, uh, and I pale in comparison in the way I can
09:37answer you. Uh, I kind of need to foreground everything by saying that the AAS as an organization,
09:42is an, I mean, I've, I've, I've known of the AAS even since I was an undergrad, right? These
09:47are the places in which we've had superstar academics used to go into those spaces, really
09:52talking about, uh, uh, issues in Malaysia and the region and so on and so forth. And
09:57we, we, we've also had such, um, giants of academics coming there, you know, people like
10:03James C. Scott, you know, uh, in his passing, uh, even Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim sort of
10:07like tweeted, uh, you know, was so sad to see him go simply because he's contributed so
10:11much to Malaysian studies and Southeast Asian studies, right? People like Ben Anderson, by and
10:17large Western scholars, I get that. But, um, uh, I need to say that my participation
10:22in this space has for the most parts been just a, a contributing academic, going on panels,
10:28having a conversation, um, you know, meeting up with friends. It's been really, you know,
10:33I would say, um, participatory. Okay. Um, at the point in which I was voted onto the council,
10:39um, honestly, I, I, I didn't see any of that happening. You didn't expect it? No, not at all.
10:43Simply because I think, um, also, uh, and we internalize this in many ways, right? People
10:48coming from much more well-recognized universities worldwide make it to these spaces. And we're
10:54talking about the Oxbridges, Harvard, Stanford. These are the people who by and large generally
11:00make it to these spaces, right? So, you know, what is, uh, uh, a scholar working on like, you
11:06know, feminism of Malaysia from the University of Malaya doing in these spaces, right? And this
11:12is not to put down UM or any of our universities. It's about access. And I recognize that. But
11:17somehow or other, I made it in, right? And, um, what do you think it was? I mean, I don't
11:22want, I know you may, some women, uh, have this tendency not to want to toot their own horn,
11:27but honestly, candidly speaking, what do you think made them say, hey, let's have Vila at
11:33the table because I think she has something to contribute? Well, you know, if, uh, if, if this
11:37was, uh, uh, for not for polite audiences, it's because I knew how to crack a joke or
11:42two, all right? Uh, sense of humor got you far. Sense of humor definitely got me very
11:47far. And I think also because I, I, I've, I've learned this art of taking the work I
11:52do very seriously, but not myself. Right. And I think there's, there's an importance in
11:56also recognizing that, um, it's important to always put the people first, not necessarily
12:01myself. And I think a lot of people, and you're right, um, maybe sometimes women have
12:05to learn to put themselves in the top. They really know how they really need to be able
12:09to sort of say, wait a minute, I've worked really hard to get here. And I recognize that
12:13it is a lot of hard work, but I think also there is a turn that's happening globally.
12:18There is a great disturbance that's happening in the force in the world today, right? Uh,
12:22in the way in which we are looking at superpowers in the way in which we are looking at, you
12:27know, masculine political spaces. Right. And I, and we can get into that conversation
12:31later. And, and suddenly if somebody, you know, you've had a set of seven candidates
12:36that are fielding themselves for the position of a council member is that my answer was very
12:41simple. If, if you feel that it's time to vote for somebody who is an outlier, who might
12:47say something that's never been said before, somebody who represents, um, you know, um, a
12:52face or a community that's hardly ever made it in, then this is your time to, you know,
12:57participate in an occupancy movement. Right. And I think that was my message that it's
13:03not about me. It's about the symbol of representation. It cannot, it can start with
13:08any one of us. It just happened to have started with me, but it cannot end with me.
13:12Right. We now know that many, there are many people like me out here and we should, uh,
13:17now funnel a possibility in which they can participate. So first of many and, and not kind
13:23of a token. So one day it will be, you know, the norm. Talk to me a little bit about this
13:28growing disturbance in the force that you've, you're noticing. Is it growing momentum? Is
13:33there, is there momentum, especially in the academia space? Um, I know there's, there's
13:38really been a lot of talk about that, but what are you observing? And is this something
13:43that we should be paying attention to?
13:45I think so, because I think it is a microcosm for many things that are happening around the
13:48world. Uh, I don't think it is an unusual narrative to have heard
13:53in the past. And you may have heard this as well, Mel, um, want to do well, leave
13:56the country, right? Want to do well, get outside. You can't stay here. You've got
14:01to go out there and compete outside in the Western world, go to America, go to
14:05Europe, you know, one of that. Um, and certainly it's not so much about that. It's
14:09not so much about that because certainly our notions of stability and our notions
14:13of progress have changed that we can have far better stability in this parts of
14:18the world. And I'm not saying that everybody is certainly assuming this
14:21position that they have to be, you know, they have to have a sense of responsibility
14:24to return. But I think also there's that desire to give back and not give back to
14:30not necessarily nation state, but certainly give back to people that, you know, you
14:34correct. The familiar is important. You want to give back. You can't always
14:39straddle this position of being the token. It's tiring and it's so yesterday, right?
14:44And, and, and you want, you want somebody else to continue this legacy of there's
14:48something here. We we've got something to offer that there's always the counter
14:52balance though for any, any time we see any kind of a progressive movement moving
14:57ahead. There's always that backlash, that counter point to that through kind of far
15:03right movements of, um, going against DEI initiatives, going against, uh, feminism.
15:09There's been a kind of back paddling in, um, uh, you know, there's been a push towards
15:15anti-feminist narratives, uh, toxic masculine narratives. How do you see that as a, as a
15:21feminist anthropologist, what do you make of this growing backlash against feminism
15:26globally? And also, you know, I see that from everywhere online, on TV, um, promoting
15:32hyper-masculine anti-women rhetoric. What is your take on that?
15:37We're talking about people like Andrew Tate, of course, right?
15:40Yes, but, but not just him, not just limited to him. He is the symbol of, of everything
15:45that we are talking about, but it can be, it's a spectrum, right?
15:48Yeah. Yeah. No, uh, that's a fabulous question. And I think it's one that, um, frightens people
15:54when somebody uses the word like feminist, right? Your first thought is that this is a, a,
15:59a very, um, uh, popular counter to the feminist movement is I don't want to be a Feminazi,
16:05right? Yeah. I don't want to be burning my, my bra in the middle of the street and, you
16:09know, fighting for the sake of fighting. And this is my, my way of looking at the world.
16:14I think globally, we are going into a new era of great anxieties, right? Everything that
16:20represented all securities are falling. They are failing us, right? They are, uh, the way
16:26in which we thought that, you know, um, the, the earth, um, essentially what we call the
16:32Anthropocene, the, the time of man, right? The time of man is that the world serves
16:36earth, right? The earth serves us. And a lot of these things are being questioned. Climate
16:42change is in there. Certainly, right? The way in which we're looking at old guard politics
16:46are constantly being, late stage capitalism, you know, all these sorts of things, this
16:50neoliberal existence is constantly there. And so the, the, the answer for it is that,
16:56you know, is in, in, in the coming up of, of formulas that, that is DEI about inclusivity,
17:02about diversity becomes problematic because we've seen the world through a lens of hierarchy.
17:08This happens in academia as well, right? Who gets to say what they need to say? Who
17:12listens? Who participates? Who has access to these spaces? And in the fold of that, feminists
17:18are coming out to say, we need to not just place women. We need to also place people who
17:23are indigenous, people who live with disabilities, people who live with, you know, immense amounts
17:29of blowback for living their lives in a particular shade or color, right? Colorist movements, casteism.
17:36So in that, I think certainly this hyper masculine spaces are being dismantled, right? And in that
17:44dismantling is that the, the blowback is very simple. Be alpha, be strong, be rich, and we can still
17:51continue to conquer, right? Ultimately, the hierarchy, the hierarchy of living is that there
17:56is a top and there is a bottom. And you need to secure yourself in the top. I, I also think this
18:01goes hand in hand in the way in which we see incel movements that are happening. The idea here is
18:07that there are men who are feeling deeply insecure and very lonely in it, right? And that loneliness
18:13then gets captured by this narrative of, you know, to hell with everyone. We can solve our problems with
18:21this aggression and, you know, almost like violence on, on multiple stages because that's how we've
18:26been doing it in the past. We've lost control of it, right? So people are frightened about that kind
18:31of blowback. But I offer a different way of looking at the world. I think it is a sign that feminism
18:37is working, right? And I think, you know, if, if, if we are always prepared for growing pains,
18:44this counter narrative, this very hyper masculine, dangerous, harmful language is a sign that it is
18:51part of the growing pains. We have to be prepared for that kind of friction, for that turbulence,
18:56simply because this now opens up an opportunity. It doesn't allow us to fall into silence. If somebody
19:02meets me with this, I don't think you should be involved because you're a woman of colour and you have
19:06no space. And historically, you shouldn't have been here rather than meet it with fear and silence.
19:11It's an opportunity for me to meet it with mutual understanding. How should then scholars and,
19:19you know, educators like yourself respond to this growing movement of hyper masculinity and almost
19:30anti-women rhetoric? Do you engage? Should you engage? You know, should, would it then, would it
19:37fuel or fan the flames? How do we think about it? There's this entire narrative or entire discourse
19:45that says, well, don't, don't ignore completely the Andrew Tates of the world. Don't even give them
19:51any attention because by doing so, by even mentioning his name, you're fueling his popularity.
19:57One more person has learnt his name today because I've said it multiple times on this show.
20:02So how do you, how do you see that? You know, you know, this whole thing about ignorance reminds
20:07me of a movie that I recently watched, which is an Avengers movie. And you know, a part of it was
20:13that one of the characters said, you know, have you ever felt really alone and just completely
20:17remorseful and in absolute pain? What do you do with that? And another character says, push it deep
20:22down inside, pushing deep down all the way down. And of course we learn the moral of the story is
20:28you cannot, right? You cannot ignore what is brewing. And I think this is it. We've trained
20:34ourselves to come up with one way of justifying our existence. The strategy, the strategy has to be
20:40in the way in which we now engage with, with the other side, right? And, and academia is no different.
20:46As I said, there's hierarchies to every field that exists. You know, this, you know, this very well,
20:52Mel, and, and, and I've experienced this, this. And the thing is that I'm not here to say that you're
20:57replacing one with the other, you know, in the same way in which we say, Hey, let's now center people
21:02that are coming from Southeast Asia. This is not a way for us to, to erase white academia with,
21:08with brown voices. Although some would argue that you should do that. But this is to say that what you
21:13have in terms of representation and power and access should be equal to the other, right?
21:18The only reason we're experiencing this is this entire element of scarcity mindset. We think that
21:24the pie can only go so far. It's not a pie. It's not a pie. And, and the fact of the matter is your
21:30growth is my growth. And the moment we recognize that we can speak to it. However, I think also
21:35aligned with that is that the fear also for people like you and I to now be able to openly say,
21:42okay, now that we've gotten that out in the open and clearly you are unhappy and uncomfortable
21:46and really do not want us here. This is a good time for us to now flood the space. This
21:50is why spaces like universities must be occupied by voices of the other constantly, right? And
21:56without fear in a way in which we teach everyone and we teach collectively about the way in which
22:02we can continue to learn from each other. So my, my way is that we constantly talk about
22:08feminism as if it's just a woman's movement. It is not. It is, it is a wonderful space to
22:14also tell men who are feeling completely alienated. You are an important, I mean, gender would also
22:20include the study of masculinity, right? And they are male allies. Probably they don't even know that
22:25they've been allies all this while. Again, these are spaces in which we recreate it. And that power of
22:30change comes with that confrontation both ways continuously until we run out of turbulence.
22:37Growing pains.
22:38So, so what would you say to young scholars, both men and women who want to pursue a path like yours,
22:46who think that maybe they don't have a voice or their voices might not be heard, might not,
22:50they might not make it to, you know, the upper echelons of, of academic society. But what,
22:57what would you say to them in terms of, did you know what you knew when you were first starting
23:01out in academia? Not at all. What would you, what would you say to them that you wish had been
23:05told to you? Um, you know, when, when, uh, when I realized that my MTV hosting career was, uh,
23:12down in the drain, was gone. That's not a career option anymore. It was not a career option simply
23:16because I was not blonde and, uh, you know. But also MTV now. And, and, and, you know, the kids don't
23:21even know what MTV is. The same way the kids don't understand why we do this when we say wind down the window,
23:25right? Uh, but, uh, I think, you know, the most valuable thing I have learned in academia actually
23:32came from a student of mine when we were learning about, uh, migration and gender and to which, um,
23:38day of, uh, Indian Tamil design said to me, I came to this class to really learn about, um, um, you know,
23:45what it meant to be a migrant. But really what I walked away with is I learned a lot about myself
23:49and that had to be the toughest lesson ever. Wow. Anything meaningful, I think, is difficult.
23:56Anything of, of, of, of worth is not easy to make. And, uh, I don't think I've ever created,
24:03I, I don't think I've created anything meaningful just yet. But I am in the process of trying to
24:07create something meaningful even if it means it takes me to the end of my life, right?
24:11A very important lesson that I think I wish someone had told me was that also anything meaningful takes
24:17time. And that, you know, in this culture of constantly rushing, in this TikTok culture of
24:22going fast is that time is so valuable because time tells us so much about ourselves in the work
24:29that we do. These are part of the legacies that we do. If you make it with love and if you make it
24:33with, with the intention to give back to somebody else, it will bear its fruit. It just takes time.
24:39And I wish somebody had told me that rather than me sort of rushing to every MTV, uh, audition in
24:44town. But also wondering why haven't I achieved success yet at every, you know, arbitrary milestone
24:51in your life. Yeah. Well, success isn't in the self, right? Success is in the way in which somebody
24:56can then tell you, uh, I've learned a lot about myself. Success is in the way in which you've given
25:01back in many meaningful ways. I think we are a society that's so, uh, hung up by accolades and,
25:08um, you know, recognition and that, that, that blinds us from the, the, from the real, the real
25:13meaning of the work that we're doing in academia. It's really about passing on. It's always been
25:18about passing on. You give forward what you've received. And we're also hung up with this whole
25:24way in which we see ourselves in the lesser. We forget that you and I are incredibly privileged.
25:29I'm so privileged to be seated with you today, speaking at the capacity in which somebody might
25:33hear and learn. And if that means that this conversation has given life to that, we've done
25:38one thing right for the day. Yeah. You and I can go and have a Kit Kat. Okay. Let's go and do that
25:42now. Thank you, Vila, for being on the show. Thank you. Thank you, Mel. I've loved talking to you.
25:46Always. Always. That's all we have for you on this episode of The Futures Female. I'm Melissa Idris,
25:52signing off for the evening. Thank you so much for watching. Good night.