SHAH ALAM, Nov 25 — Political empowerment has been identified as the major contributor to the improvement of the Malaysia Gender Gap Index (MGGI) in 2018, the Department of Statistics Malaysia revealed today.
Malaysia has now ranked the 63rd position out of 144 countries in the Global Gender Gap report, as compared to its 70th ranking in 2017.
The MGGI identifies the gap between women and men across four sub-indices — economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment.
“Based on the MGGI 2018 score, our ranking has improved to 63rd position when compared with MGGI 2017 where Malaysia ranked at 70th.
“Simultaneously, within East Asia and the Pacific, Malaysia stood at the sixth position, improved two positions as compared to 2017 and ahead of Indonesia, China and Brunei Darussalam,” Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin in a statement today.
Mohd Uzir was commenting on the publication of Statistics on Women Empowerment in Selected Domains in Malaysia 2018, which featured gender-related statistics in Malaysia for the years between 2016 to 2018.
He said that the MGGI in 2018 showed the average score of 0.711, or 71.1 per cent, which had increased from the 0.697 average score, or 69.7 per cent, in the previous year.
“Achievement of women has surpassed men in the educational attainment sub-index with a score of 1.054.
“Health and survival sub-index recorded a score of 0.958, followed by economic participation and opportunity (0.727), and political empowerment (0.106). The political empowerment sub-index was the major contributor to the increase of MGGI score in 2018,” the statement read.
A score of 1.0 (100 per cent) indicates no gap between men and women, in which the statement said the equality of women and men has been achieved
According to the department, 14.4 per cent of elected parliamentary were women, while the percentage of women in ministerial position (17.9 per cent) was lower as compared to men (82.1 per cent).
As for the educational attainment sub-index, the statistics show that the literacy rate between men and women of the age 15 to 64 years-old showed a difference of 0.7 percentage points, where 96.3 per cent women are literate compared to 97 per cent men.
“Recognising the significant role of women, Malaysia is committed to achieving gender equality and promoting the rights of women and girls. The government’s continuous efforts and commitments towards achieving gender equality are in line with the Sustainable Development Goals and Eleventh Malaysia Plan (MP11),” the statement read.
