Pay gap widens: Women get RM67 for every RM100 paid to men

Despite having higher enrolment in tertiary education, women are getting about a third less in salary compared to men.

Worse, the gender pay gap has also widened significantly since 2020, according to the Malaysian Gender Gap Index for 2022 released by the Department of Statistics Malaysia today.

About half of all women have tertiary education in Malaysia, but only about a third of men do.

However, for every RM100 in salaries and wages received by men, women receive just RM66.67.

This is a sharp decline from RM96.21 in 2021 and RM94.07 in 2020.

In 2022, the estimated annual salary for women stood at RM42,080 compared to RM63,117 for men.

The report does not provide an explanation for the sharp drop but does mention that the methodology for arriving at the 2022 figure has been “improved” compared to earlier reports.

It says the previous methodology is calculated on based on the female-to-male wage ratio. The new method is adapted from the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) methodology for calculating the “estimated earned income” component for the Gender Development Index 2021-2022.

The Malaysian Gender Gap Index captures the magnitude of gender-based disparities in selected domains and is measured by DOSM.

It is scored from zero to one, with one being perfect parity between women and men.

Gender gap growing

Overall, the Malaysian Gender Gap Index for 2022 sat at 0.694, placing the country at the 93rd spot among 146 countries in the world, said chief statistician Mohd Uzir Mahidin.

“Simultaneously, within East Asia and the Pacific nations, Malaysia stood at the 11th position in 2022, ahead of Timor-Leste (0.693), Brunei Darussalam (0.693), Republic of Korea (0.680), China (0.678), Vanuatu (0.678), Fiji (0.650), Myanmar (0.650), and Japan (0.647),” he said.

Johor’s gender gap index score was the lowest at 0.670, followed by Negeri Sembilan at 0.674, and Pahang at 0.679.

Johor’s score was dragged down by the measure of economic participation and opportunity, where the score was just 0.545.

The territory with the highest score in terms of gender parity was Putrajaya, at 0.792.

Economic participation and opportunity are almost at parity between men and women in the federal administrative capital, at 0.910.

Significant disparity in economics, politics

However, in terms of economic participation and opportunity nationwide, the DOSM found significant disparity still existing in 2022, with the index being 0.644.

Besides the gender pay gap, there was also a significant gap in terms of the number of women who make up legislators, senior officials, and managers.

Almost a quarter of people filling those positions are women, the DOSM said.

However, conditions are better in the professional and technical fields, where women make up 40.7 percent of all workers.

The labour participation rate of women is far lower than men, however, with 55.8 percent of women involved in the labour market, compared to 81.9 percent of men.

Of the domains measured, women fared the worst in political empowerment, with a score of 0.102.

This is because women only make up 13.5 percent of elected MPs while there is only 17.9 percent of women in ministerial positions, down from 2022.

More girls than boys

However, the index is much better in terms of health and survival, with life expectancy for women being 4.9 years longer than men, at 76.4 years.

The leading causes of death for women in 2022 were pneumonia, coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular diseases (where blood flow to the brain is affected), Covid-19 infections, and breast cancer, the DOSM said.

In Malaysia, there are also more boy babies born compared to girls, at a ratio of 939 girls to 1,000 boys.