SHAH ALAM: The Selangor government has initiated a gender mainstreaming project in an effort to encourage gender sensitive development in the state.
Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari said the move would allow the state government to achieve a minimum 30 per cent women's involvement in all sectors and decision making in the future.
"Women in workforce have increased at least one per cent at the third quarter of last year. However, it is still low with only 55.2 per cent compared to men at 80.4 per cent.
"According to a research conducted by Khazanah Research Institute (KRI) in 2018, if there is an increase of 30 per cent of women's involvement in the labour force , the nation's gross domestic product would increase between 7 to 12 per cent.
"There is still a gender gap where women have an income of RM93.20 compared to RM100 by men.
"The World Bank 2019 report stated that the country's per capital income would increase to 26.2 per cent if all discrimination against women was demolished. A research on gender discrimination among the civil servants done by Institut Wanita Berdaya (IWB) Selangor in 2019 showed that 43.84 per cent of the women felt that they did not get the chance to be promoted, 45.27 per cent were based on gender inequality during employee selection, and 24.37 per cent opined that the work tasks given were not equal with the men," he said in his speech at the Selangor Gender Mainstreaming programme launch ceremony here.
Therefore, he said, women's involvement in decision making had yet to reach the targeted percentage of 30 per cent.
Amirudin said the state government would uphold the (gender mainstreaming) project as it was in line with the four aspirations of Smart Selangor 2025, which are innovation, connection, social unity and harmony.
He said the state government fully supports this and was committed in giving the mandate to IWB for the project to be carried out successfully.
"From this project, which will be carried out for three years, we are expecting a more inclusive economy, women's involvement in all sectors, people's involvement in decision making, and a better and systematic management.
"This gender mainstreaming is our initiative to ensure Selangor becomes an inspirational state and the first to achieve gender equality in Malaysia.
"I would like to congratulate the four state excos who become the apprentice for this project this year," he said.