Lack of women Ministers in Najib's Cabinet a huge disappointment

I am very disappointed that women are again under-represented in Datuk Seri Najib Razak's new Cabinet lineup.

Out of 35 ministerial posts, only 2 are held by women. While the number of women Ministers remain the same with the previous Cabinet, the percentage of women Ministers has dropped from 6.45% (2 out of 31 ministerial posts) to 5.7%.

The empowerment of women is a universal trend, and in fact, BN had campaigned for women’s rights, vowing to achieve at least 30% women representation and participation in Parliament and all important decision-making processes.

Not only that, while Najib has promised to raise the women’s employment rate to 55% by 2015, the women’s employment rate in this country has remained almost the same for the past 15 years and we see no signs that Datuk Seri Najib has done anything proactive to improve the situation.

By having a new Women’s Development Minister, I hope that our government will seriously look into the empowerment of women and not just pay lip service to women's rights an issues in this country.