M’sia needs more women making decisions

IT was nice to acknowledge on International Women’s Day on Friday that Malaysia has indeed made some strides in gender equality.

We’ve done especially well in education, according to the Global Gender Gap Index 2023. Malaysian women are on par with men with a score of 1 compared with 0.995 in 2022 (a score of 1 means equality has been attained).

But we’ve actually gone backwards when it comes to one very important aspect of society: political representation.

We recorded the lowest score ever for this country with 0.098, a drop from 0.102 in 2022. This shows not only that women are seriously lagging behind in politics but also that the situation is getting worse.

We seem to remember some energetic talk about achieving that 30% female representation goal a few years back. Remember when all the political parties were making an effort to include women candidates in elections?

Whatever happened to that?

Women in politics would know what issues to address to support women through their own lived experience.

For instance, there’s been talk about offering women civil servants shorter working hours so they can better care for their families. This underlines the fundamental change in mindset that must happen if women are going to be treated truly equally. Because why is it that it is the woman who is expected to come home from work and then work at looking after the family? Abang, what do you do after work?

The United Nations’ International Women’s Day theme for this year is “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress”, and again, that underlines the deep change in thinking that must occur.

There’s the persistent pay gap, for one. It has been said ad nauseam that women earn less money for doing the same work as men. Granted, the gap has narrowed a little. But there’s still a noticeable gap.

Even a supposedly forward-looking company like Google still has backwards thinking when it comes to this: Last year, a lawsuit brought by Ulku Rowe, a director of engineering, claimed there was a significant pay gap between her and men in the same role despite them having similar backgrounds and experience. Rowe was awarded US$1.15mil (RM5.5mil) last October.

The gender pay gap is inextricably linked to economic progress, as study after study has showed for decades. Economic progress for women means economic progress for the country.

That is why political representation is so important: We need lawmakers in place who will think like this, who understand that women’s rights are human rights.