Women score in education, says gender report

PUTRAJAYA: While women surpassed men in educational attainment last year, they lagged in other areas, causing the gender gap to widen marginally compared with 2018.

The Malaysia Gender Gap Index (MGGI) score in education was 1.053 in favour of women last year.

Under the MGGI, a score of one, or 100%, indicates equal achievement between the two genders while a score of below 100% indicates that the gender is behind and vice-versa for a score above 100%.

In 2019, the MGGI score was 0.709 (70.9%) for women, down from 0.711 (71.1%) in 2018, according to the Statistics on Women Empowerment in Selected Domains, Malaysia 2020.

Apart from education, women were behind men in most areas. Women scored 71.7% in economic participation and opportunity and a low 55.6% in labour force participation, far behind Australia with 72.5% and Singapore at 69.1%.

Generally, the score for developed nations in this area exceeds 60%.

Women are slightly behind in the health and survival sub-index, scoring 95.8%.

The score is even more dismal in the area of political empowerment.

Chief statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin said women achieved a score of 10.8% in this area in 2019, just a razor-thin margin compared with 2018.

“This shows that women are still way behind men in ministerial positions as well as in the Dewan Rakyat and state assemblies.

Malaysia’s global ranking dropped 10 places from 83 in 2018 to 73 in 2019.

It was estimated that 15.7 million of Malaysia’s population were women, out of a total of 32.5 million in 2019, he said. – Bernama