Contradictheory: A woman’s place

After leaving to have children, fewer Malaysian women return to the work force. And women who are the only female at the office are one-and-a-half times more likely than men to feel burned out and consider leaving the workforce. — 123rf.com

“What are the characteristics of a man?” This was one of the questions on a Malaysian Pendidikan Kesihatan (Health Studies) exercise sheet for Year Three children.

It seems you can determine a child’s gender by whether they do the following:

> Play with Barbie dolls.

> Help mother cook in the kitchen.

> Play football in the field.

> Wear a hair clip.

Unsurprisingly, this one question out of about 10 generated the most discussion among the parents.

It also meant that a conversation had to be had with one particular eight-year-old girl about what is “healthy” behaviour. After all, she doesn’t play with Barbie dolls, she helps her father cook in the kitchen, and she plays football in the field near her house.

The Chaka Khan song (later covered by Whitney Houston) goes, “I’m every woman/ it’s all in me”. But Chaka Khan also sang, “I’m a woman in a man’s world / So I’m fool enough to say / That a woman’s place is in the home / Working twice as hard / For the same reward as any man, yeah”.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, on average, a woman might work just as hard as a man for four-fifths of the salary. So if you’re going to earn less, why even go out to work? For a long time, it was accepted that “a woman’s place is at home”. And I’m not talking about a long time ago. My friend’s uncle told her, “Why do you bother working so hard to get a degree when at the end of the day you’re just going to get married and stay at home?”

His statement actually seems to be borne out by the statistics. Between 2008 and 2017, women made up from 59% to 70% of students in Malaysian tertiary education. However, according to the Department of Statistics Malaysia, in 2019, women made up only 39% of the total labour force.

Only about five out of 10 women who could be part of the labour force are actually participating, whereas for men the participation rate is around eight out of 10.

And this imbalance in participation means there are fewer women higher up in the decision-making process, which then means female-centric issues are given short shrift.

In Malaysia, as well as in many other countries in the world, many women drop out of the workforce to raise a family. The difference is that in other countries they eventually return to work. So although the labour force participation rate sees a drop for women aged between 25 and 30 years old, it begins to rise again when women are over 30 (roughly when the children begin to go to school) in other countries.

Why do Malaysian women stay away? A survey conducted in 2014 found that 60.5% of Malaysian women are not seeking work because of “housework”, a fact corroborated by a later survey in 2018. This implies that once women drop out of work, they take up responsibilities in the home and cannot easily abjure them.

In 2020, there’s another reason why women are dropping out of work: Covid-19. Although both men and women are losing jobs this year, women are more likely to be staying at home – and, presumably, “doing the housework”.

Although in theory parenting is a shared responsibility, in reality one parent usually takes the lead in managing the home, and in Malaysia usually it’s the wife and mother – because that’s the assumed role they take.

And don’t forget that, in general, women tend to earn less than men anyway, so it “makes sense” for the one who earns more to continue working.

This is a pattern seen elsewhere around the world. A report by international management consultancy McKinsey on women in the US workplace noted that “Mothers are more than three times as likely as fathers to be responsible for most of the housework and caregiving during the pandemic”, and one-and-a-half times more likely to spend an “additional three or more hours per day on housework and childcare”.

As a result, the report states that one in three mothers have considered leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers.

The shrinking pool of women in the workforce has a knock-on effect. The report goes on to note that women who find themselves the only female at the office are more likely to feel pressure and experience micro aggressions. Consequentially, senior-level women are more likely than men to feel burned out, and are one-and-a-half times more likely to consider downshifting their role or leaving the workforce.

This will mean fewer women in leadership. “All the progress we’ve seen over the past six years could be erased”, claims the report.

In Malaysia, the situation is likely to be worse, given how accepted it is for women to take on the more traditional roles.

The solution is deceptively simple: Get more women back to work. When things get better next year, get women to participate again at all levels of society.

But while you might often hear, “As a man, I have to earn a living and support my family”, we still seem to be a long way from replacing “man” with “parent” or even “person”.

It may seem a bit of an overkill to blame a Pendidikan Kesihatan worksheet for Malaysia’s talent issues, but when you literally teach that girls help their mothers in the kitchen while boys play football outside in the park, perhaps it’s timely for another reminder from Ms Houston: “I believe the children are our future/ Teach them well and let them lead the way.”

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In his fortnightly column, Contradictheory, mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof Azmi explores the theory that logic is the antithesis of emotion but people need both to make sense of life’s vagaries and contradictions. Write to Dzof at [e-mail]. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.