Dr Kanwaljit Soin, one of the founding members of AWARE, spoke to 938LIVE last week on politics, meritocracy and ageism in Singapore.

During her time as a Nominated Member of Parliament since 1995, Dr Soin formulated a Family Violence Bill and integrated her proposals into the amendments to Women’s Charter. She championed the idea of gender-neutrality in the law and called for the granting spousal maintenance based on needs, now in consideration as an amendment to the Women’s Charter.

Despite the fear of the consequences when criticising state policies and rejecting social convention, her passion and mission to raise awareness on women’s rights spurred her and other members to continue forming and growing AWARE into a reputable non-profit organisation.

“I don’t think we self-censored too much,” she said in the interview. “We had a passion. We had a mission. We want to fulfil something. If we didn’t have that, we would never have founded AWARE. But once we had passion and mission, and we formed AWARE, we had to go about achieving it. If we didn’t speak, then we might as well have closed the organisation and gone back to our private lives.”

To read the inspiring interview in full, click this link.