MARCH 8 is International Women’s Day. The theme for this year’s celebration, “Accelerate Action”, emphasises the importance of taking swift and decisive steps to achieve gender equality, as stated on the International Women’s Day website.
“It calls for increased momentum and urgency in addressing the systemic barriers and biases that women face, both in personal and professional spheres, unwavering quest for equal rights parity, empowerment of women and eradicating gender inequality.”
The quest for gender parity so far has achieved limited progress, and the journey is littered with many obstacles and challenges, including social and cultural expectations, an institutionalised patriarchal structure, and biased employment policies.
The document that monitors the progress and achievement of gender parity in each country is the Global Gender Gap Report.
Compiled by the World Economic Forum, the methodology used to calculate the gender gap index is based on data covering four variables – economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
In 2024, Malaysia’s overall ranking dropped to 114 out of 146 countries compared to 102 in 2023.
But despite the drop in overall ranking, Malaysia was ranked first, together with 27 other countries, for gender equality in educational attainment.
Meanwhile, it ranked 80 for health and survival, 102 for gender equality in economic participation and opportunity, and 134 for gender equality in political empowerment.
This drop in the global ranking should be a wake-up call for the government to accelerate efforts to empower women and achieve gender parity.
In my analysis of the progress in improving economic participation and opportunity, I noted that the data compiled focuses mainly on boardroom diversity and promotion of women in senior managerial positions.
There was a scarcity of specific data on economic empowerment of poor women in the B40 group, especially single mother households.
It is well documented in Unicef’s “Living on the Edge” study on low-income households in Kuala Lumpur in 2023 that the highest incidence of absolute poverty is among households headed by a person with disability (PwD) at 67%, followed by single mother households at 59%.
The majority of single mothers, comprising widowed, divorced or separated women, are in poverty due to limited employment opportunities, low educational attainment and childcare responsibilities.
They do not have the purchasing power to meet their basic needs, such as nutritious food, water, housing and access to education and healthcare.
The plight of divorced single mothers is exacerbated by the failure of former husbands to pay alimony. A study by Sisters in Islam (SIS) on 124 Muslim single mothers from the B40 group found that only 12.9% of those who filed joint property claims (harta sepencarian) received their due while just 5.6% obtained alimony or spousal maintenance (nafkah).
In the long run, children born into poor single mother households are most likely to experience severe food insecurity daily, and are susceptible to hunger and undernourishment.
The prolonged impact of hunger and undernourishment together with low educational attainment will perpetuate the marginalisation of single mother households, leading to an intergenerational cycle of poverty.
The government must increase the momentum and urgency in addressing poverty in poor single mother households.
In the words of Amartya Sen, an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “Poverty leads to an intolerable waste of talent. Poverty is not just a lack of money, it is not having the capability to realise one’s full potential as a human being.”
Poor single mothers must have access to capital, economic opportunity and education to realise their full potential and also ensure that their children will have a better future.
DATUK WEE BENG EE
Tumpat
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