KUALA LUMPUR (May 28): While Malaysia has seen significant results from its efforts towards becoming an equitable nation, women still remain under represented in both politics and the workforce, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said today.In his keynote address at the Women Deliver Global Conference 2013 here, Najib highlighted Malaysia’s achievements in areas of education and maternal health care and services.
Malaysia has one of the lowest maternal mortality ratios in the region, having slashed its maternal mortality rate by 45% from 53 per 1000,000 in 1990 to 29 per 100,000 in 2010.“It is my hope that countries still lagging behind in meeting the 5th Millennium Development Goal will be able to learn from our experience,” Najib told the audience of royalty, dignitaries and global advocates and experts.
Present were his wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, who is also patron of the conference, Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Rohani Abdul Karim and Women Deliver president Jill Sheffield.
“We stand ready to provide technical support to countries with persistently high maternal mortality,” said Najib.
The former Women, Family and Community Development Minister also pointed out that Malaysia’s investment in universal education without gender discrimination has yielded results “beyond expectations”.
“A girl at school in Malaysia today is more likely to go to university than her male classmates,” he said to applause from the audience.
“Today 65% of students enrolled in tertiary education are women. Consider this in light of what happened to Malala Yousafzai who dared to dream of having access to education."Malala, a Pakistani teenager and the youngest nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, last year survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban who were trying to stop her championing of education for girls.
However, Najib added, Malaysia’s challenge is to now ensure that such opportunities for girls and women do not narrow in the real world.Malaysian women make up 49% of the population and the electorate but only 47% of the country’s workforce.
The government has since committed itself to ensuring that women hold at least 30% of decision-making positions in the public and private sectors by 2016.“Women are still not equally represented in the workforce,” he stated. “Female labour participation which is currently at 47% must be improved if we want to continue seeing robust and sustainable growth.”
For this to happen, he said, more jobs aligned to women’s needs should be offered to encourage their participation in the workforce such as through home-based, part-time or flexible working hours.His administration aims to encourage this shift with reforms under the Economic Transformation Programme which is targeting an increase in female labour participation and the number of women on public listed company boards to 55% and 30% respectively.
“Furthermore, if we want to see equally sustainable democracy it is clear that we must increase women’s political participation,” Najib stated.“I am encouraged by the active and visible role taken by some women in our national politics. But I believe it is incumbent upon us to find out why women are under-represented in Malaysia’s political discourse.”
The recently concluded GE13 saw 23 women elected at parliamentary level and 57 women elected at state level.In total, women politicians now represent 11% of the country’s parliamentary and state seats which is still lower than the 30% target of the United Nations Committee on the Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
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