KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 24 – Malaysia continues to lag behind other countries when it comes to women in public life and decision-making roles, according to the Statistics on Women Empowerment in Selected Domains 2024 report by the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM).
In the report, a comparison of Malaysia with selected countries for selected gender indicators in 2023, showed that the representation of Malaysian women in Parliament was significantly lower at 13.5 per cent, compared to Australia (38 per cent), the United Kingdom (34.8 per cent), Singapore (29.3 per cent), and the Philippines (27.3 per cent)
There was a marginal percentage increase of 1.3 from 2022 to 2023 of women elected as senators.
However, women as house of representatives remained unchanged in 2022 and 2023 at 13.5 per cent.
Meanwhile, the involvement of women as cabinet ministers decreased to 16.1 per cent in 2023 from 17.9 in the previous year, and the percentage of deputy ministers also dipped to 27.6 per cent in 2023 from 29.6 per cent in the prior year.
In the judiciary, the percentage of female judges in 2023 increased by 2.6 percentage points from 37.3 per cent to 39.9 per cent as compared to 2022. Conversely, the percentage of male judges dropped by 2.6 percentage points from 62.7 per cent (2022) to 60.1 per cent (2023).
The participation of women in uniformed units responsible for peace and security also remained substantially lower than men. Female police officers only comprise 13.3 per cent of the police force in 2022 and the figure increased slightly by 0.5 percentage points to 13.8 per cent in 2023.
While the number of male police officers decreased by 0.5 percentage points from 2022 to 2023, men still constituted a large number of police officers at 86.7 per cent in 2022 and 86.2 per cent in 2023.
The participation of women in the Army, Navy, and Air Force remained significantly lower than men in 2023 at 8.0 per cent or 9,801 personnel.
In contrast, men made up 92.0 per cent of the Army, Navy and Air Force with 112,768 personnel in 2023.
Women participation was the highest in the Navy (11.4 per cent), followed by Army (7.6 per cent), and Air Force (6.5 per cent) in 2023.
