Ceylon Today Editorial

Women empowerment in Malaysia

14 December 2016

President Maithripala Sirisena is scheduled to fly to Malaysia on a three day official visit starting tomorrow. (Ceylon Today of 13 December 2016).

Malaysia was in the news recently, not only because of the mysterious disappearance of one of its passenger planes with a 'full' load and the shooting down of another of its passenger airliners flying over Ukraine soon after, but due to the manhandling of Sri Lanka's envoy to Malaysia by Tamil terrorist supporters, coinciding with the visit to that country by former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa, responsible for crushing the Tamil LTTE terrorists.

From an economic and investment perspective Malaysia is important to Sri Lanka, not necessarily due to Sri Lanka's two largest telecom operators having Malaysian investments, with the largest being controlled by a Malaysian Government telecoms entity and the second largest, which has an over 40% stake of it controlled by a Malaysian Tamil of Sri Lankan origin, but due to the fact that two large US based tech. companies which planned to set-up operations here, withdrew to Malaysia instead, in the aftermath of the July '83 disturbances.

These two tech. companies, Motorola and Harris Corporation are responsible for providing thousands of Malaysians with jobs, while at the same time boosting tech. and with that Malaysia's overall exports, with Sri Lanka being a possible importer of such exports.

Therefore, Sri Lanka's loss was Malaysia's gain! From an economic and sociological outlook, Sri Lanka and Malaysia have quite a bit in common. Both practise open economies, though Malaysia, in population and geographical terms is larger than Sri Lanka. But it's difficult to compare the island, at least from an economic perspective, with any other Asian country, other than the South-East Asian (SEA) economies of Malaysia or Thailand.

Countries in the SAARC region are either too big (India), too poor (Bangladesh and Nepal) or too small (Bhutan and Maldives), or have their own peculiar problems (Islamist terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan), to draw a parallel with Sri Lanka. Similarly, the closest SEA economy Myanmar has just emerged out of decades long military dictatorship and is also too poor to draw a comparison with Sri Lanka, while Singapore may be too small, being a City State.

Due to the seeming Malaysia focus coinciding with Sirisena's visit, Malaysia has a trade surplus with Sri Lanka (similar to that of Thailand), a possible reason for this may be women empowerment. For instance, the labour force participation rate (LFPR) among women in Thailand and Malaysia is much higher than that in Sri Lanka.

While the LFPR among women in Sri Lanka is a low 36% (that means 64% of the women labour force in Sri Lanka is economically inactive) according to Census and Statistics Department's (CSD's) last year's data, the LFPRs for women in Thailand and Malaysia were much higher at 72% (as at 2014 according to the World Bank) and 54% (2015 data, according to Malaysia's Statistics Department (MSD)) respectively.

Malaysia, though being a Muslim country, with its Muslim laws (though not as stringent as in Saudi Arabia) which have more than a streak of conservatism as far as women are concerned, has however raced ahead of Sri Lanka as far as women empowerment is concerned, compared to 'liberal' Sri Lanka.

Women with money in their handbags tend to be more independent than those who haven't. CSD said that the reason why the LFPR among women in Sri Lanka was low was because they preferred to be engaged in housework.

Another reason may be the size of Sri Lanka's informal employment sector which is 150% larger than the country's formal employment sector. According to CSD, 60% of those employed (both sexes) were in the informal sector, whereas only 40% were employed in the formal sector.

In contrast, in Malaysia, a mere 11.4% of non agricultural employment (i.e. in the services and manufacturing/industry sectors covering both sexes) was in the informal sector, MSD said. This comprised a total of 1.4 million persons. Employment in the informal agriculture sector in Malaysia was not immediately available. Nonetheless, as at 2014, 12.2% employed, vis-à-vis both sexes in Malaysia, were in the Agriculture Sector (formal and informal), 27.4% (Industries Sector) and 60.3% (Services Sector) respectively. Last year's statistics were not immediately available.

Considering the smallness of Malaysia's Agriculture Sector, that sector may be discounted. In contrast, in Sri Lanka, last year, 28.7% of all employed were in the Agriculture Sector (percentagewise, more than double that of Malaysia's), while 25.8% were employed in the Industry Sector and 45.6% (Services Sector).

Further, 53.7% (1.47 million) of all of Sri Lanka's employed women (2.73 million) were employed in the informal sector, CSD said. In fact, the majority (4.69 million (59.8%)) of all Sri Lankans employed (7.83 million), were in the informal sector. Therefore, the answer to much of Sri Lanka's economic ills, not least women empowerment, may lie in getting Sri Lanka's informal economic sector into the mainstream.