MORE organisations should empower women workers with benefits like a work-from-home policy, Prime Minister Najib Razak said today.

He said this when announcing CIMB Group Holdings Berhad’s new policy to allow women staff who are mothers to work from home for one day a week.

“We hope other organisations will follow suit and I am glad to celebrate International Women’s Day. 

“I agree we should celebrate women not just by saying we celebrate them but by really empowering women and ensuring they are in key positions in every facet of our society,”  he said during a “Jom Bersama PM” session with CIMB Group in Kuala Lumpur today.

Najib also said 2018 is the year to empower women.

“I believe for a nation to prosper there must be maximum female participation at every level of society,” he said.

Other benefits CIMB rolled out for women employees are a childcare subsidy, child care centres, nursing rooms at Menara Bumiputra-Commerce and Menara CIMB, designated car park bays near lifts for pregnant women.

CIMB also announced its partnership with the Malaysian Gymnastics Federation (MGF) through the CIMB-MGF Gymnastics Development Programme.

Activists today voiced their concern on the safety of women in the country and urged the party that formed the next government to take a firmer stand on violence against women.

Social activist Marina Mahathir said the authorities need to address the culture of violence towards women who fought for women’s rights, especially Muslim women.

“The authorities must change this attitude. Women make up 50% of Malaysians and voters. We do not need things like Year of Women Empowering which is just empty talk ,” she told The Malaysian Insight. – March 8, 2018.