Lack of childcare facilities a cause of gender inequality
Tuesday, 07-03-2006International Women’s Day Message
Days away from the start of the 9th Malaysia Plan, aspects of the previous Plans, presented with much fanfare years ago, are still gathering dust in the government file cabinets.
Increasing the female labour force is one of the proposals outlined in the 6th Malaysia Plan (1991-1995). Malaysia’s female participation in the workforce has been hovering around 45 percent over the past two decades.
In 1985, female labour participation in Malaysia was 44.3 percent, up a shade higher at 46 percent in 2005.
This is much lower than most industrial countries, such as Singapore (56 percent), South Korea (51 percent) and United States (57 percent).
The 6th Malaysia Plan said the increase would enhance women’s status in the society vis-à-vis the men. One of the reasons for the lackluster performance is due to the lack of childcare facilities and other supporting mechanisms for women in the workforce.
The lack of concerns for childcare has a consequence for income distribution.
According to the Economic Report 2004/05, the number of domestic maids rose sharply by more than three times from 75,300 in 1997 to 361,006 as at July 2004.
A report sponsored by National Economic Action Council revealed that families that can afford to employ maids were usually dual-income families with a combined income of RM 5,000 per month.
In other words, families that could afford maids earn two incomes. Women who cannot afford a maid in their family have no choice, in most cases, but to stay at home.
The government belatedly allocated a meager RM 1.9 million to build 10 childcare centres in August 2005.
That is grossly insufficient. The DAP Wanita reiterates its long term call for a national plan for childcare services to facilitate female participation in the workforce so that their welfare will be enhanced by their independent source of income.
i don’t think the main reason here is the lack of childcare centres… i personally have never seen what a childcare centre in malaysia looks like, but i can imagine… and in my imagination, it isn’t pretty.
would you want to send your precious little child to a child care centre set up by the government? considering more and more parents are even spending exorbitant amounts of money to send their children to private schools because of the standard of our government schools, i would think that they would be even more reluctant to send their young children to these child care centres that could possibly have so many problems/defects that I don’t have the time to mention them here.
how does one know that all these “unemployed” women actually want jobs? quite a lot of malaysians live comfortable enough lives to allow the wife/mother of a family to take care of the children “so they don’t grow up speaking indonesian”. it is also quite common to see families where the wife/mother is a housewife but she also has a maid to help her.
maybe the problem lies with our malaysian thinking. i hope what i am about to say does not sound sexist but you must interpret it in the most “un-sexist” way.
malaysians are still not really in favour of women working. if you look at our culture, women who reach the age of 40 and are not married are pressured by their elders into doing so. it is a fact that if you are not married you have no choice but to work (unless of course your family owns the hilton empire). however, if you are married, you have a choice, depending of course on the income of your spouse as to whether you want to work to earn some extra cash or if you would rather take care of your family and home.
also, protective parents would rather find a financially secure husband for their daughter so that she can be left to take care of their future grandchildren. In Malaysia if you are not married after a certain age (depending on who you are talking to) people will think there must be something wrong with you. I am not saying that is how I think, I am saying that from my observations of the thousands of people I have met, this is what I see.
in the countries to which you drew a comparison, the societies are more modern. And please note that modern is not necessarily better. for example, in the US, there are so many single and divorced women bringing up families on their own. these people are forced to work. they have no choice. also, this is not frowned upon by their society because that is their culture.
People in these places also probably would be more willing to send their children to child care centres as these are probably well run and clean with qualified personnel. I don’t think I can imagine any public amenity in Malaysia being up to standard in the near future unless it is 2 days old or it is in putrajaya.
therefore, the only conclusion i can draw from this is that the so-called malaysian plan was written on a very superficial basis without considering the many many reasons there could possibly be for this so-called problem.
you might say that my argument is superficial as well, but i wrote this in 10 minutes and i have another job to do which puts food on the table; the people who came up with the malaysian plan spent god knows how long coming up with that crap.
Comment by iiiii — Tuesday, 07-03-2006 @ 17: 44.25
Coming back again to my point about ‘bad corporate culture’. This in general is a problem in Malaysia and needs another 20 years to turn around. The government seems all talk and no action. Government servants are mostly ineffective in their daily duty. Why? Bad corporate culture. They have no motivation, further training, ethics and sense of duty.
Comment by firehawk — Wednesday, 08-03-2006 @ 10: 40.26
Having proper nurseries and day care centres of quality is very much a dream in Malaysia today. Government more interested in raising petrol prices to help GLCs ie MAS, Proton.
Comment by firehawk — Wednesday, 08-03-2006 @ 10: 42.50
Good, I can write again.
I agree women should work – it is empowering to them. Given the way our tax payer money is wasted hence higher cost of living, there is no choose for urban households to have double income.
I just wonder. How come the developed countries like UK, US, Japan, Germany do not have our “maid” phenomenon. It may be due to a few factors:
1) they work shorter hours or flexi-hours so more time for children
2) their children are trained to be independent from young whereas here, indulgent parents
3) tax payers’ money being channelled to well-run day care centre?
Here, we have
1) people working long hours coz they dun know how to work efficiently/wanna stay late to prove a point/whatever else
2) traffic woes in Klang Valley and Penang – more time with yr cars then yr kids
we need to have a more livable environment for parents and kids….
Comment by lee wee tak_ — Tuesday, 14-03-2006 @ 09: 36.12