Supporting women entrepreneurs in Sarawak
Malaysia’s fight for gender equality continue to make its strides, especially towards financial freedom and economic self-sustainability in a world predominantly maleoriented.
This became the focus of this year’s International Women’s Day 2019, seen in its theme of #BalanceforBetter.
The call is made for balance to drive a better working world: a gender-balanced boardroom, a gender-balanced government, a gender balance of employees, and more gender balance in wealth, to list a few.
Statistics are encouraging. According to the latest Women in Business research from Grant Thornton International, the percentage of businesses in Malaysia with at least one woman in senior management is at a high 95 per cent – an increase of 15 per cent in the last year.
However, the percentage of women holding senior leadership positions has dropped from 28 per cent last year to 23.
Globally, 87 per cent of businesses have at least one women in senior management, an increase of 12 per cent in the last year. Women make up 29 per cent of senior management team, which is the highest it has ever been.
While this is only up 10 per cent over the past 15 years of research, the Grant Thornton research showed that half of this increase has been achieved in the last 12 months alone.
Datuk NK Jasani, country managing partner of Grant Thornton Malaysia sid these figures are incredibly encouraging and is a strong indication that gender parity is starting to be taken seriously by businesses.
This comes as external factors such as organisational transparency, gender pay gap reporting and highly visible public dialogue like the #MeToo movement appear to be making businesses wake up to the change that is needed.
“In Malaysia, a few initiatives have helped drive the positive results of the increasing businesses with women on board,” he said in a statement “One of it is the new Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance that recommends having 30 per cent of women directors in boards of large companies.
“Today, we can see that we have more women as Ministers and Deputy Ministers as well as in leading institutions like Bank Negara, Bursa Malaysia and Perbandanan Nasional Bhd.”
Still ways to go
While the number of women in senior leadership is increasing, gender parity at the head of the table is still a significant way off.
When it comes to the role of chief executive officer or managing director, the research showed only 17 per cent of businesses in Malaysia have a woman leading the business.
The report further revealed that women cited that lack of access to developmental work opportunities (16 per cent) and caring responsibilities outside work (16 per cent) were the barriers to reaching senior management level.
Besides that, finding the time alongside core job responsibilities (14 per cent) was also a hurdle for women to overcome on their route to executive roles.
“There should be more support in place for working women especially when it comes to aiding them in their caring responsibilities outside work,” Jasani said.
Most of them had to leave the workforce to care for their young children.
“In this aspect, our government had taken the call to set up childcare centres in all government offices and the first will be set up in the Parliament and will be operational this year.
“The decision to establish the childcare centre was in line with the government’s policy to encourage more active participation of women in politics, policymaking and in the workforce. The corporate companies are encouraged to follow suit and this will encourage women to be back in the workforce.
“In addition, last year, our Government had also announced that individual tax exemptions of up to 12 months will be given to eligible women who return to work in 2019. This would encourage women to return and the exemption programme would be supervised by TalentCorp.”
The report showed that in line with the positive overall progress recorded, 63 per cent of businesses in Malaysia are taking deliberate action to improve gender diversity.
Businesses are providing mentoring and coaching (26 per cent) to women.
Besides that, companies are implementing flexible working (25 per cent) to aid women.
“Despite the strong business case in favour of gender diversity, change at the top has been slow until now. Hopefully, the sharp increase in the representation of women in senior leadership we’re seeing this year is not purely a knee-jerk reaction to the current social climate and we’ll see similar progress in the coming years.”
In Malaysia, a few initiatives have helped drive the positive results of the increasing businesses with women on board. Datuk NK Jasani, country managing partner of Grant Thornton Malaysia