By Lee Hock Guan. Southeast Asian Affairs 2005, The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. Introduction: The prevailing practice of affirmative action typically involves introducing measures to raise the participation of members of an economically disadvantaged group in the areas of education, employment and business, where they had been historically excluded or underrepresented. Measures taken are generally in the form of preferential policies toward members of a designated group, based on criteria such as a particular ethnicity, gender, or religion. Precisely because affirmative action measures entail bestowing preferential treatment on members of a designated group, they invariably will generate controversy; in particular preferential treatment on the basis of ethnicity and gender has generated intense, passionate debate.