MARCH 8 marks International Women’s Day, celebrated for almost 110 years now, a day dedicated to calling for equality between the sexes.

This year’s theme is #BalanceforBetter, which resonates with many different issues highlighted in the past year, and showed how women and men are yet to be treated equally.

A few days ago, a new index released by the World Bank showed that only six countries – Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Sweden – have laws that protect men and women equally.

Malaysia scored a mere 50 on the Women, Business and the Law 2019 index, demonstrating that women in our country are only given half the legal rights of men in the measured areas.

These six countries scored full marks on freedom of movement, women’s decision to work, equal pay, marriage, children, running a business, managing assets and having social security for old age.

Creating and enforcing legislation that ensures women and girls are recognised as equals in society is the first step.

The areas selected show a snapshot of the gaps, including laws that impact women’s decisions to work, get married, have children and our pay.

While politicians laud that Malaysia has somewhat progressive regulations on maternity leave, lack of uniformity of practice has led it to score a shameful “0” in the “having children” indicator.

This is because of poor laws around maternity, paternity and parental leave, which are likely to influence women’s economic decision-making when thinking about starting a family.

Equal pay is also an issue in Malaysia. The Department of Statistics in 2016 found that out of 10.2 million wage-earners, six out of 10 recipients were male. It also found a 4% gap in pay between women and men.

Creating gender balance is not just an issue for women, it’s an issue for society as a whole. If our laws and policies hold back 50% of the population from exercising their economic and social rights, then this will as a whole hold back all of society.

The indicators chosen by the World Bank do not include laws on ending child marriage or ensuring pregnant girls are able to continue their education or birth-control measures, regardless of their marital status.

Some may not consider these to be “critical” economic indicators, but early marriage binds young girls within a cycle of disempowerment and vulnerability.

Girls who are married young are unable to procure an education or participate in the workforce, and are at greater risk of early pregnancies and maternal deaths.

They are also at risk of domestic violence and sexually transmitted infections, especially if their partners are much older. Laws safeguarding the bodily autonomy of girls will go a long way to set norms and aspirations within society on what girls and women are capable of achieving.

While there is a quest, and justifiably so, around sex-balanced boardrooms, parliaments, government cabinets, and companies, we should not leave behind the girls and women who are lesser educated, poorer and live in rural areas.

In this equal access to education and other non-conventional pathways out of poverty – including business and sports opportunities, access to financial and technology products, access to markets – should also be considered within gender-balanced indicators.

According to the 2015 census, women own one in five companies in Malaysia and the slow growth rate – 1.1% rise – in female ownership in the five years hardly testifies to the entrepreneurial spirit of Malaysian women evident everywhere – in businesses, shops, markets, malls and street food stalls.

Despite enjoying gender parity in secondary school education and having more women than men in institutions of higher learning, this has not translated into equal participation in politics for women.

Women’s representation in the Dewan Rakyat is up from 8% to 14.4% in the last general election. However countries such as Nepal (33%) and Rwanda (67.5%) show much higher political representation of women.

This despite being lower income countries, and having experienced protracted and bitter conflicts, including a civil war in Rwanda. Yet progress in these countries has been rapid on the sex equality while Malaysia seems to meander about our commitments to women.

#BalanceforBetter is not only about gender equality in the public realm, but also in the private realm. Women bear the burden of care work in our society. Care work includes taking care of children, the elderly, the sick and disabled, doing domestic work such as cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing.

The common assumption is that women are naturally disposed to handle care work. Or care work is often wrongly considered as a natural response or reaction to life situations by women.

But in reality, it is physical, mental and emotional work, which is unequally weighted on women and not always by choice. The economy runs in a well-oiled manner because of this unrecognised and uncompensated care work of women.

Ensuring that care work is more equally distributed, or at least in some way compensated for will go a long way in ensuring gender balance. This will require more than changing laws: it necessitates changing mindsets. – March 8, 2019.

* Sivananthi Thanenthiran is the executive director of the Asian Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW) and a SheDecides Champion for Asia Pacific. 

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.