Honey TAN Lay Ean

Honey Tan Lay Ean is an Advocate & Solicitor of the High Court of Malaya. She has a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Buckingham, and a Masters of Law from the University of Warwick. She joined the Middle Temple and was called to the Bar in England in 1989. She was active in the Penang Bar Committee, and is currently a member of the Family Law Committee of the Bar Council, Malaysia.

She is a member of Pusat Kesedaran Komuniti (Empower), and a life member of the Women’s Centre for Change, Penang (WCC). She is also a trainer with the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) which enables her to increase the awareness of activists and lawyers in the region in the area of Feminist Legal Theory and Practice. She is a Fellow of the Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives (ARENA).

Her main areas of interest are in judicial education, training and judicial activism. She is researching and writing on women’s experiences in the Malaysian criminal justice system in cases of sexual assaults, and the impact of gender studies on the lives of students. The results of the recent general elections in Malaysia have enabled her to explore federalism in the area of laws affecting local authority elections, and incorporating international laws and conventions at state levels.