The Global Gender Gap Report 2022 released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) reveals that Malaysia is ranked 103 rd out of 146 countries, an improvement compared to 112 th out of 156 countries in 2021.
Unfortunately, Malaysia is still behind Singapore (49th ), Thailand (79th ) and Indonesia (92nd ).
The report gauges gender gap between women and men in four areas – economic participation and opportunity, education attainment, political
empowerment, health and survival.
Although the report showed that Malaysian women achieve high score in access to education and health, their involvement in political sector is
relatively low with the score of 123.
This means only 15% of parliamentarians are women and only 16.1% of ministers are women.
Hence, more policies and programmes should be carried out to ensure gender equality in the political sector.
I would like to take this opportunity to suggest to the Prime Minister Dato Seri Ismail Sabri to apply the Gender Inclusiveness Policy as implemented by the Penang state government to narrow gender gap.
The Penang state government implements the policy to ensure women and men are equal in terms of opportunities at decision-making levels with the ratio of 40% men, 40% women and 20% open to both qualified men and women.
The policy works toward striking a balance between men and women by avoiding domination of a gender exceeding 60% at decision-making level.
Based on this policy, the Penang state government has approved a proposal to appoint at least 30% of women at local councils, board of directors of government-linked corporations in Penang subject to candidates’ qualification and eligibility.
The state government is the only state which introduces a variety of incentives to promote gender equality and women’s participation in politics.
This includes the Penang Women’s Assembly, a programme specially tailored to discover women’s talents.
I believe such policy and programme initiated by the Penang state government can be an example for the Federal Government in its effort to narrow gender disparity in politics.