More women in workforce could increase national per capita — Johari

THE World Bank estimates that Malaysia could increase its national per capita income by 23 per cent by increasing women participation into the nation’s workforce, Second Finance Minister Datuk Johari Abdul Ghani said yesterday.

He said Malaysia was lagging behind as compared to other countries such as Singapore, Japan, Thailand and other developed countries as most of them recorded about 70 per cent women participation in the workforce. Malaysian women now contributed 54 per cent of the national workforce.

He said it was imperative to change the figure as it would attract more foreign investors in doing business with Malaysia as well as the investors’ ability in making good judgement for business.

“If you want to increase per capita income for the country you need to bring women back in the workforce ... that is the shortest way of doing it,” he said when launching the ‘ Women Power Talk: Effective Networking the Way Forward’, here yesterday.

The one- day talk focused on empowering women to build up their networking for business and career as a way to success, and was organised by Wanita Umno, in conjunction with the 2016 Umno General Assembly, which begins today at the Putra World Trade Centre here.

Johari said the women’s participation in the workforce included in the field of professional and decision-making position namely board of directors in public-listed companies, doctors, professors, ministers and members of Parliament.

Based on the World Economic Forum about global gender gap report, where a survey had been conducted on 145 countries, Malaysia was ranked at 132 out of 145 countries on women in ministerial position and ranked at 120 in women labour participation.

“We need to improve the numbers if we want to be a developed country by 2020,” he said. — Bernama