Selangor Journal
Chief statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin. — Picture by BERNAMA

Malaysia gender gap index up slightly in 2020

PUTRAJAYA, Nov 17 — Malaysia Gender Gap Index (MGGI), which identifies the gap between women and men across four sub-indices, scored 0.714 or 71.4 per cent in 2020, a slight increase from 0.709 in 2019, according to the Statistics on Women Empowerment in Selected Domains, Malaysia, 2021.

The four sub-indices are economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; health and survival; and political empowerment. A score of 1.0 (100 per cent) indicates that equality between women and men has been achieved.

“Based on the MGGI 2020 score, we were ranked 74th from 156 countries in the world,” said Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin in a statement issued today following the release of the report.

He said the achievement of women has surpassed men in the educational attainment sub-index with a score of 1.059.

The women’s achievement in the health and survival sub-index recorded a score of 0.956 while economic participation and opportunity scored 0.738, he said.

Political empowerment recorded the lowest at 10.0 per cent or a score of 0.100, which showed women were still lagging behind men in the ministerial position and Parliament, he said.

Mohd Uzir said the labour force participation rate for women was still low at 55.3 per cent in 2020 as compared to other South-East Asia countries such as Singapore (69.7%) and Thailand (66.8%).

In 2020, it is estimated that 15.8 million of Malaysia’s population are women out of a total of 32.6 million.

“Women as the head of households were estimated to spend RM3,666 a month (in 2020) and the expenditure on food and non-alcoholic beverages is RM690 or 18.8 per cent of the total expenditure in 2019,” said Mohd Uzir.

For MGGI by state, he said the top three states that recorded the highest scores last year were Kuala Lumpur at 0.853, followed by Putrajaya (0.793) and Perlis (0.782).

— Bernama

Top Picks

Free tolls on all highways for Aidilfitri on April 8, 9 — Minister

Anwar attends Iftar Madani, breaks fast with nearly 10,000 people

Malaysia committed to reforming economy, embracing innovation — DPM