AISYAH, a human resource officer at a national airline company, was retrenched after 15 years with them.  From a two-income household, living a comfortable life, she and her family are now struggling to make ends meet. The house loan that was affordable before, has now become a huge burden. For the last five years she has been job-hunting, but for a woman in her 40s, this is not easy. 

Liz, aged 30 is a single mother. She has a diploma in marketing and used to work as a tour guide before she left to get married and start a family. Since getting divorced, she has not been able to get a similar job. This is because no one wants to employ single mothers as tour guides, believing that these women would not be reliable. She now works in a daycare centre, where the work hours are long and she barely earns the minimum wage. She does not have medical insurance or other benefits. 

The stories above illustrate the fact that a woman’s experience as a worker, is an extremely gendered experience. Women face additional vulnerabilities and discrimination due to gender discrimination and stereotypes. People fail to realise, that these deep-rooted notions of gender and stereotypical roles for women often forces women to be engaged in precarious work. Women who are illiterate, poor or non-citizens face higher degrees of job insecurities and are usually found engaged in informal or self-employed sectors. 

As we celebrate this year’s International Workers’ Day (May 1), let us remember the thousands of workers, especially women, who lead nightmarish lives because the current system of neo-liberal capitalism that seeks to exploit them and governments that justify this inhumane system in the name of progress and development. While the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the fore the precariousness of women’s employment issues, these have existed since the time women joined the workforce almost a century ago.

An example of this discrimination is the gender wage gap which prevails in all countries regardless of income status. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), women earn 77% of men’s wages. This difference is not solely due to  differences in education or age, but is linked to the undervaluation of the women’s work, the skills required in female-dominated sectors or occupations, and the need to take career breaks or reduce hours in paid work to attend to care responsibilities, all of which leads to many forms of discrimination

According to a report by UN Women,  women are taking the bigger socio-economic hit from the global pandemic as they are disproportionately affected. This is due to being overrepresented in precarious employment, including in the informal sector, where their benefits and protection are inadequate or lacking. This is seen by the high number of women working in manufacturing, textile/garments, care services, hospitality and tourism sectors. Usually these sectors offer the least protection, as a large number of workers are casual, daily wage earners, etc. 

Women are also burdened with the lion’s share of domestic care work. This uneven division of care and domestic work at home is once again largely due to gendered social expectations, limits even more women’s livelihood choices. These imbalances are further heightened when schools and businesses close, and where women need to care for children, the elderly or ill family members. 40% of women in southeast Asia have reported that they have faced violence at the hands of their intimate partners as the tension increases in the household due to the various restrictions implemented as countries combat the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The pandemic has also disproportionately affected women migrant workers across Asia and the Pacific, in particular those with irregular migration status. The risks of facing discrimination, exploitation and the violation of their human rights are worsened due to all the restrictions to control the pandemic. Many women migrant workers and those working in micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises, have lost their livelihoods without any financial security or social protection to rely on.

Therefore, it is important to take a gendered approached in addressing the consequences of this pandemic. In Malaysia, a sizeable number of women work as daily-wage earners, running small food stall, employed in the retail and service industry have lost their income during the implementation of the Movement Control Order (MCO). As advised by economists, the government must help the self-employed who have lost their income and channel aid to employees who earn less than RM5,000 a month, a group which makes up 72% of the nation’s workforce. They Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) has called on the government to dip into the RM400 billion reserves to help the people in this crisis, especially those engaged in precarious work.

The government must also take immediate action to prevent job losses through expansionary policies and promote access to remunerative work opportunities for all, including specifically women. This means formulating economic stimulus packages in line with human rights standards, including women’s rights and gender equality commitments made by governments under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the 1995 Beijing Platform of Action.

We deserve to know how the government is planning to handle the loss of jobs and livelihoods, caused by this pandemic. Is the government planning to engage in accountable decision-making processes with the use of relevant and current data in the formulation of policies to deal with this crisis?

UN agencies including the WHO had urged all countries to collect data related to this pandemic that showcases sex, age, disability disaggregated data (SADDD), as this informs not only health interventions but multi-sectoral interventions. According to UN Women, the SADDD for Malaysia was unavailable (pg 25). This is a serious concern as SADDD can support the development of a rights-based approach in tackling the pandemic. This data can be used to inform policies for mitigation and recovery more efficiently. 

In the Malaysian context, we also recommend that ethnicity, income or wages earned as well as geographical location be included into the data collection. This is critical as the impact of this pandemic and the various measures taken to combat it, has long term consequences on the socio-economic wellbeing of the people.  SADDD and the inclusion of gender perspective will help ensure a multidimensional approach in dealing with this pandemic and its consequences. We believe that the involvement of gender experts in this process is critical so that women’s rights, especially in the area of employment is protected and respected. 

A feminist approach to the crisis requires a transparent, accountable and participatory process to addressing the crisis and in developing remedies. The government is urged that when formulating the responses to the crisis, they must include the participation of parliamentarians, civil society organizations, including women’s rights groups, trade unions, indigenous groups, and others. We find it extremely worrying  that since March 2020, several women from key decision-making positions have been removed by the current Malaysian government without adequate explanation. 

Finally, discourses around development must shift from a focus on people as market producers or consumers to people as social citizens. This means people need to be recognised not only as economic actors but also as social and political actors. The system must be structurally transformed to end the perpetual recurrence of crises caused by policies inspired by the neoliberal model of development-as-growth with little or no consideration for human rights. 

The Malaysian government must take their obligations for the protection, respect and promotion of women’s rights seriously. Neo-liberal policies for development have proven to be detrimental for large segments of society, especially women. For the government to achieve the aspirational goals of equality, social justice and environmental sustainability, they must engage in examining the role of state, the market, and society using a more human rights-based approach, which includes a feminist economist understanding of these issues. – April 29, 2020.

* Dorathy Benjamin is executive director of ​Persatuan Kesedaran Komuniti Selangor (EMPOWER), Irene Xavier executive director of Persatuan Sahabat Wanita Selangor (PSWS).