Welcome Address by Dato’ Sri Sharizat Abdul Jalil, Minister of Women, Family & Community Development at the 2009 Women’s Summit, KL
[salutations]
Y.A.B Tan Sri Dato’ Muhyiddin Mohd Yassin
Timbalan Perdana Menteri Malaysia
Y.A.Bhg. Puan Sri Norainee Abdul Rahmad
Isteri Y.A.B Timbalan Perdana Menteri
YB Senator Datin Paduka Chew Mei Fun
Timbalan Menteri Pembangunan Wanita, Keluarga dan Masyarakat
Y.Bhg. Tan Sri Faizah Mohd Tahir
Ketua Setiausaha Kementerian Pembangunan Wanita, Keluarga dan Masyarakat
Distinguished members of the diplomatic corps
Distinguished speakers and facilitators
Ketua-ketua Jabatan dan Pegawai-pegawai kanan
Dif-dif jemputan,
Puan-puan dan tuan-tuan yang saya hormati sekalian.
Bismillahirahmanirrahim.
Assalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh dan salam sejahtera.
Syukur alhamdulillah kerana dengan izinNya dapat kita sekali lagi berkumpul pada tahun ini bagi menjayakan Sidang Kemuncak Wanita tahun 2009. Bagi pihak Kementerian Pembangunan Wanita, Keluarga dan Masyarakat, saya ingin mengalu-alukan kehadiran puan-puan dan tuan-tuan ke Sidang Kemuncak Wanita 2009.
Saya amat berbesar hati atas sambutan dan sokongan berterusan seperti yang ditunjukkan pada pagi ini khususnya di kalangan mereka yang tidak pernah ketinggalan menghadiri persidangan ini pada setiap tahun. Suka saya memaklumkan bahawa segala pandangan dan maklum balas yang diberikan oleh peserta telah diambil perhatian oleh Kementerian Pembangunan Wanita, Keluarga dan Masyarakat dan Kerajaan. Sebahagiannya telah dijadikan input kepada penggubalan dasar dan inisiatif untuk menambah baik kedudukan wanita dalam pekerjaan dan meningkatkan persekitaran kerja mesra keluarga.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am delighted to welcome the Deputy Prime Minister, Y.A.B. Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, to this year’s Summit. I believe this is possibly the first time he has been surrounded by so many women! I am sure we are all looking forward to what he has to say about how we, the women of Malaysia, can play an effective role in nation-building, particularly during these difficult times. Tan Sri, on behalf of all the women here, I would like to thank you for being with us, and also for agreeing to a dialogue session with the participants, following your keynote address. The request for a question and answer session came from some of the women during the pre-summit meetings. This is indeed, in tandem with the Government’s approach to listen to the rakyat and in this context to listen to the women who comprise half of the population. I am sure the discussion on some of the burning issues affecting working women will prove to be both interesting and insightful.
I would like to thank our speakers: Dato Nirmala Menon, Ms. Shireen Muhiudeen, Ms. Bobbi Dangerfield, Ms. Christina Chia and Dato’ Khaziah Mohd Kadir. They are all well-known in their respective fields and have achieved great success, and I am sure we will find them both informative and inspiring.
I am also happy to welcome our Learning Lab facilitators to their first Women’s Summit. Ms. Shirley Taylor, Ms. Heather Hansen and Ms. Alison Lester have come up from Singapore to be with us. I think those of you who have signed up for their Learning Labs will enjoy their sessions and find them very useful in improving your communication and creative thinking skills. I would also like to thank Mr. Salahuddin Sulaiman from PNS, who are going to present a very interesting workshop on Franchising Opportunities. All these Learning Labs offer a wonderful opportunity to improve existing skills and acquire new ability, and I’m sure you will make good use of it.
Women Tackling Adversity
Ladies and Gentlemen:
This year, we are meeting to talk about some of the adversities that women face in the Malaysian workplace, and how we can rise to these challenges and bounce back from the difficulties and setbacks that threaten our well-being and the quality of our lives.
Adversity is no stranger to us women. It has taken, and continues to take, many shapes and many forms. But there is no question that women have what it takes to get up and get going in the worst of circumstances. We are naturally resilient. We have the potential to bounce back from setbacks. Our short history is littered with the stories of women who have been knocked down in more ways than one. But they have got back up and fought for what they believed in. Those of you who have attended previous Summits will have heard first-hand, the stories of many women who have turned adversity on its head and used the crises in their lives as an opportunity to transform and enrich their lives.
Remember Diana Rose in Mukah – with her determination managed to breathe fresh life into Melanau culture and made it an attractive centre for craft and culture; and Chong Sheau Ching who has been abandoned by the husband successfully founded e-Homemakers, a community of teleworkers, homemakers and home-workers which has proven to be a godsend to countless mothers trapped between the need to work and the need to look after their children. What I mentioned is only a part of the whole episode. There are many more success stories out there.
What we learnt from the stories is, they are women with an inspiring, unbreakable, positive spirit, which sees a world ripe with possibilities. It is these everyday stories that speak most powerfully about women’s ability to turn adversity into opportunity. How can we use our innate strength and resilience to tackle the problems that confront us today, and turn the situation around for our own benefit and the benefit of our nation?
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I see four major areas of adversity facing our women today:
The Repercussions of the Recession
Today, women across Asia are feeling the effects of the economic slump. For instance, in the Philippines, women comprised 70 to 80 per cent of the Filipino workers being retrenched. In Malaysia, as of 3rd March 2009, 19,224 local workers have been retrenched. Out of this number, 50.7 per cent (9,749) were female workers despite women only accounting for 36.0 per cent of the total labour force.
Our female labour force is concentrated in the export industries which are hardest hit by the collapse of the markets. The fall in exports is concomitantly affecting women employed in the clothing, textiles and electronics industries. And when women lose their jobs, it has huge repercussions on a larger number of people – primarily children – and this is true above all for poor families.
During the last economic crisis, we saw how important it was to upgrade the skill level of women workers. It would help those who were retrenched to be quickly absorbed into alternative employment or income generating activities. For low skilled women at low level jobs, it would help them retain their jobs and improve their positions. In this regard, we should commend the Government’s effort to cushion the effect of retrenchment through providing training programmes for retrenched workers.
More recently the Government has introduced stimulus packages which reflect gender-based realities. These packages will see us spending more on health and education, which will benefit women. And under the National Key Areas announced by the Prime Minister last month, we will create a pool of 4000 women entrepreneurs by the year 2012.
All this will help us weather the storm of this adversity. But, as I am sure many of you will say, there is much more that needs to be done. What we need to do is to look at this economic crisis as an opportunity to take a more innovative approach to solving the problems that women face in the workspace.
Work-Life Balance
Ladies and Gentlemen:
A growing number of women in the workforce today, are struggling to balance their personal and professional lives in a way that doesn’t compromise the well-being of their families, particularly their children.
Women ‘choose’ not to work when conditions make paid employment unfeasible or costly e.g. when there is no child care available or when it becomes unaffordable. They move out of high prestige, well paid jobs because the requirements of a career in those jobs are increasingly formulated in a way that makes it impossible to balance work and family obligations. This is also the reason women are less likely to opt for high profile positions in an organization.
This issue has been a constant at practically every one of our Summits. We all know that people who manage to achieve a balance in their working and home lives, are happy, productive and efficient. We all know that people who lead an unbalanced life, are likely to suffer stress and ill-health, be less productive and less motivated. We have all heard time and time again, that work-life balance offers a win-win situation for both organizations and the people who work in them. We know all this, so we may wonder why is it taking so long for companies and organizations to make the necessary changes in the working environment…not just for women, but also for men. And I wish to stress here that the time has come for us to change our mindset and promote shared family responsibility between the husband and the wife.
The Gender Gap
Ladies and Gentlemen:
While Malaysian women progress remarkably, the Malaysia’s Gender Gap Index, launched in 2007, showed that women are still under-represented at the higher levels of corporate and political life. So although girls are outperforming boys in our schools and universities, this has not led to equally significant increases in women’s participation in the workforce and in decision-making positions. And in the 2008 Global Gender Gap Report, Malaysia slipped to 96th place from 92nd place in the previous year.
In effort to bridge the gap, the Government has adopted multi-pronged measures to mainstream gender perspectives into the development process, including formulating relevant policies, reviewing laws affecting women, improving the capacity of the national machinery for incorporating women’s perspectives into the development process, improving access to education, enhancing training and upgrading health care.
However, a gap between policy and practice has persisted. Thus, gender mainstreaming continues to be a challenge, not only for us here in Malaysia, but in most of the countries in the Asia and Pacific region. The challenges include the feminisation of poverty, and the concentration of the majority of women in the informal sector and in part-time jobs which are lower paid and offer less opportunities for training and promotion.
Given that women’s participation in the labour force is only around 47 per cent, we have a large reservoir of productivity. So it makes sense, both for the shorter as well as the longer term, that we tap into women’s productive power fully. It is critical for the women themselves. It will benefit their families. It will benefit men. It will benefit companies. It will benefit the economy. It will benefit the nation.
My Ministry is currently putting together an Action Plan for the advancement of women as well as for fast-tracking women into decision-making positions in both the public and private sectors. In drafting this Plan, we have looked at the feedback received and recommendations made at previous Women’s Summits. This includes the review of laws and regulations seen as discriminatory to women in the workplace, grooming women to become leaders through a mentor-mentee programme and encouraging the establishment of networks that help create greater collaboration and exchange of information and ideas.
Violence Against Women
Ladies and Gentlemen:
One of the biggest problems women in this country face is violence. Violence in their homes. Violence on the streets. Violence at work. And because women are the primary caregivers in many families, any threat to their safety and well-being, affects the well-being of their children.
A woman who undergoes abuse in her home suffers not only physically and emotionally, but also faces economic insecurity and less control over important decisions for her children’s health, nutrition, education and well-being. In addition, her children can be psychologically and emotionally damaged. This can have serious repercussions, often leading to substance abuse, juvenile pregnancy and even criminal behaviour in later life. And often, children who grow up with violence in the home learn to use violence in their interpersonal relationships to dominate others. Boys who see their mothers being abused are more likely to grow up and abuse their wives.
There can be no real peace in our country, until our women can go about their business without being robbed, and our girls can get to and from school without being raped; and until our wives and mothers and daughters can feel safe in their own homes.
Conclusion
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Gender empowerment is no longer a distant dream but a palpable reality. It is the progress that we as women have made that must encourage us and spur us on to even greater achievements.
Can anyone ever question women’s equality, their enormous talents and capabilities? And yet there are still many areas to be addressed if they are to achieve their full potential for the benefit of this country. Women are anxious – and justifiably so – about our future. What we have achieved so far has been the result not just of individual effort but of collaboration and consensus, a coming together of women united in a common purpose, seeking the common good.
And that is what I am looking to do. It is so exciting for me to see so many of you here at the Women’s Summit, women from different backgrounds, different age groups, and diverse sectors. It’s people like you – people with passion and enthusiasm and the will to act, working in concert with us in government, that can make a real difference.
How can we work together to turn these tough times to our advantage? How can we ensure that women’s contributions to economic recovery and future growth are fully harnessed and the gender outcomes we all want are achieved?
How can we work together to create a workplace of the future where people can marry both work and personal life so that neither employer or employee is short-changed? And to enable women to progress in the workspace and achieve their full potential?
How can we work together to support and protect the needs of women in the informal sector? And to ensure that women have greater access to training and enterprise development?
What can we do together to change attitudes and behaviour in order to create safe environments in the private and public spaces in which our women live, work and carry out their daily lives?
No one individual, organization or entity has all the answers. But together we can – and will – make things happen that will ensure that women in Malaysia become full partners in the progress and development of this nation. It will take courage, determination, an unwavering commitment, and a constructive approach.
I believe it can happen. I believe these tough times actually offer us unique opportunities to re-focus on what we can do and produce results that really matter. Let us, together, look beyond the adversity to the learning and the opportunity.
Thank you.