Introduction
The world once again celebrates the International Women’s Day on March 8 and rally behind the call to “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress”—the theme for this year.
Achieving gender equality in the workplace remains a focal area that demands accelerated progress in the women's empowerment agenda. Investing in women is an attractive incentive for governments as women constitute a significant human resource base in many countries.
Women's participation in the productive economy not only expands the workforce and contributes to economic growth but, more importantly, is essential to women's own economic security, enabling them to shape their future and family without being dependent solely on men.
Reaching 60% —An Achievable Target?
With Malaysian women’s labour force participation rate (LFPR) in 2022 still low at 55.8%, compared to 81.9% for men, narrowing this gap has been identified as one of the targets under the Madani Economy Framework announced last year. The government aims to increase women’s LFPR to 60% within the next ten years to further unlock women's potential in productive economic activities. Addressing care challenges that have been keeping women at home and creating conducive working arrangements have been identified as key to achieving the target. Accordingly, several gender-responsive initiatives, including incentives to encourage women to return to work and childcare, have been introduced under the annual fiscal budget.
Despite the various initiatives introduced over the years, the progress has been marginal. Over the past five years, women’s LFPR continue to hover around 55%, compared to men’s which recorded a 1.5 percentage point increase within the same period. This disparity can be considered to be more serious considering women generally attain higher levels of education than men, yet underperforming in the labour market.
In absolute term, the number of women not participating in the labour force exceeds that of men by 2.3 times, at 4.95 million and 2.16 million respectively in 2022. Undeniably, a significant improvement occurred between 2011 and 2018, with an additional 1.38 million women joining the workforce. However, the rise was partly explained by the rise of own-account workers— more precarious in nature—which grew from 11.2% of employed women in 2011 to 19.5% in 2018, translating to an additional 627,500 women workforce.
Dissecting women's LFPR further across different age groups reveals that it peaks at ages 25 – 29 at 77.5%. Considering Malaysian women's first marriage age is at 27, women’s presence in the workforce gradually declines for all subsequent age groups as it later coincides with childbearing and parenting years. The above situations highlight Malaysia’s persistent challenge in fully harnessing the nation’s human capital potential.
Paid and care work trade-offs
The primary reason why women opted to stay outside the labour force is due to caregiving and housework responsibilities. Data shows that 3.1 million women, constituting 62.9% of those outside labour force, cite family responsibilities as their primary reason for not seeking employment. This contrasts sharply with a smaller percentage of men, only 2.3% or 50,500, who attribute their decision to similar reasons.
Women generally shoulder more caregiving and domestic work activities than men. In fact, globally, women perform an overwhelming 76.4% of unpaid care work, spending an average of 4.5 hours per day, in contrast to men who spend only 1.4 hours. In Malaysia, KRI’s pilot Time Use Study conducted in 2018 found that women spent 63.6% more time on unpaid care work compared to men, despite both dedicating comparable time on paid work (6.6 hours for women and 6.9 for men). This underscores the "double burden" or the "second shift" that women must undertake, managing caregiving and housework after completing their first shift in the workplace.
Examining the trend over the past two decades suggests that there has been little improvement in rebalancing family responsibilities at home. In 2020, the proportion of men outside of the labour force due to family responsibilities peaked at 13.4%, indicating an increase in men undertaking caregiving duties during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this trend has since reversed, with a subsequent decline to 5.8% in 2021 and a further drop to 2.3% in 2022.
Redistribute care work
Malaysia must take further measures to accelerate women’s workforce participation if it is to achieve the 60% target. The marginal progress in the last few years could also extend beyond trade-offs between paid work and caregiving responsibilities. Other factors, such as sociocultural norms, may also play a role, necessitating countermeasures if they are hindering progress. Nevertheless, it is important to ensure that the advancement of women in the workforce does not come at the expense of their well-being and security. Pushing women to work without the appropriate balancing act may adversely affect them, especially when they undertake work more precarious in nature, simultaneously worsening the “double burden” they have been shouldering.
Hence, it is equally important to ensure decent work for women and reconfigure the distribution of caregiving responsibilities, both within and outside the home. Within homes, there needs to be a redistribution between men and women by involving greater participation of men in caregiving roles. Redistribution outside the home entails expanding care service provisions by entities beyond the family unit such as the market, the not-for-profit organisation and the state. The prevailing care arrangements need to be more comprehensive to accommodate the needs of the women workforce, including expanding affordable and quality formal care services and professionalising care work that aligns with the decent work agenda.
