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172 David Kloos

a positive evaluation of a politician’s academic background and professional
expertise is not assured. But in Malaysia, a place where perceptions of personal
success and projects of national development are deeply embedded in techno-
political language, it makes sense. At the same time, Ati’s analysis of Dr Mariah’s
performance evokes a gendered tension I found to be salient among women
candidates of both PAS and Amanah. is is the tension between, on the one
hand, the perception—strongly connected to ideas about motherhood and
domesticity—that a woman is more able than a man to ‘touch the hearts’ of
voters, and, on the other hand, the supposed electoral advantages, emanating
from an increasingly highly-educated and socially mobile electorate, of a
professional ‘aura’.

Figure 9.1 Dr Mariah Mahmud speaks at a night market. Taman Puchong
Prima, Selangor, 30 April 2018 (personal collection of David
Kloos).

In this chapter I use Malaysia’s 14th general election (GE14) in May 2018
as a lens to analyse this tension and the ways in which it has a ected the
careers and campaigns of women candidates of PAS and Amanah. I argue

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