No One Left Behind — Gender.

Written by Jonathan Lee, edited by Rifqi Faisal and researched by Team MYER.

If there is one thing the last decade is to be remembered for, it would be that it was one of many upheavals. Especially so towards the end of it, where there were global calls for equity.

What is equity, and why equity instead of equality?

In simple terms, equity is fair treatment, while equality is equal treatment. If a person were to start from a place of disadvantage and treated equally with someone of advantage, the disparity between both individuals perpetuates and worsens.

Equitable measures can close this disparity and create a level playing field for everyone.

Demands for equity has touched many aspects of society; among these is education, which will be our focus for this month.

Importance of Equity in Education

The need for gender equity in education cannot be stressed enough. Gender equity provides equal opportunities for both sexes in areas of economic, social, cultural, and political developments. It is about the fundamental human right of offering everyone unbiased opportunities, regardless of gender.

If truly achieved, society can break away from a men-centred world and females will be able to benefit from public and domestic life as much as males. In exchange for that, we have a more diverse society and workforce.

Take for example Nordic countries which have long been champions of equity. Policies that encourage gender equity are integrated into the education sector through equal education for all and comprehensive employment laws, among many others.

The result of a more inclusive workforce? Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden make up the top five of the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap Report for inclusivity. The economy has also benefited: the GDP per capita has increased by 10 to 20% over the past 50 years, according to an OECD report.

Equity in education goes a long way in equipping a country’s citizens with the necessary knowledge to contribute back to it. If everyone in the nation can enjoy equal opportunities, it will surely reap the benefits of a more educated society.

There are concerted global efforts to ensure this. As part of UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals (better known as SDGs), SDG 4 aims to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ and SDG 5 to ‘achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.’

This implies that there is international recognition that females are often at the losing end of a globally broken education system. However, where does Malaysia stand on this? Let’s investigate.

Malaysian Education for Females: An Introspection

Generally speaking, Malaysia has made huge advancements in terms of female inclusivity in education. As reported by UNICEF in 2016, literacy among adult females has increased significantly from 61.3% in 1980 to 90.8% in 2010, implying that female educational attainment has risen substantially post-independence era.

In terms of equity, Malaysia fares pretty well too. Males and females enjoy near equal opportunity and access to education. Affordable education in the form of national schools helped bridged gender disparities in primary and secondary education (UNICEF 2019).

More recently, it was announced that Malaysia was ranked among the highest achieving countries in women’s educational attainment in the Global Gender Gap Report of 2018. Measured using the ratios of women to men in primary-, secondary- and tertiary-level education, Malaysia successfully registered a score of 1, placing us among the ranks of countries such as Denmark and Australia.

Malaysia has certainly come a long way in terms of increasing education accessibility to females. A look at Quick Facts 2019 published by the Ministry of Education Malaysia shows the following:

• From 2017 to 2019, the enrollment female students in primary schools have increased from 1,302,318 to 1,328,560, an approximately 2% increase
• 1,008,422 female students were enrolled in secondary schools as compared to 999,074 male students for the year 2019

Female students are excelling academic-wise too. In the same report, it was discovered that the percentage of female students achieving all A’s for public examinations like UPSR and SPM far exceeded that of male students.

Furthermore, female students are found to have performed better than their male counterparts in Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests (both are large-scale studies designed to assess pupil achievement across several countries).

These findings support the data provided by UNESCO indicating that the participation and performance in education for females worldwide outperform that of males. We can also take pride in cross-countries comparisons that Malaysian reports female participation in education is better than some developed countries.

It doesn’t end there. In the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2018–2023 unrolled by the previous administration, there are plenty of measures to ensure that equity is sustained, among which are 100% enrolment rate across all levels from preschool to upper secondary by 2020 and also setting targets such as achieving a 50% reduction in achievement gaps (urban-rural, socioeconomic and gender) by 2020.

Where’s the problem?

It may be heartening to see the above statistics, perhaps even bring a sense of hope as there seems to be a genuine commitment by the government to ensure gender equity in education. Which begs the question: what else is there to highlight?

Truth is, there are cold truths that statistics cannot capture. Despite boasting academic progress, the odds remain unfavourably tilted against women in our schools’ due to teachings that ring of an outdated mindset. Gender bias and victim-blaming remain part and parcel of the Malaysian school syllabus.

We can also bring into question the quality of teachers who spout gender-discriminatory rhetoric, or maybe even seemingly harmless acts like telling someone a major or career path isn’t suitable.

These could go a long way in hindering bringing about gender equity in our country. Such factors could manifest into societal behaviours that unfairly dictate the roles women should play and the communications that happen between both genders in Malaysia.

As noted by Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail (former Minister of Women, Family and Community Development), Malaysia has struggled to unlock the full potential of the female population. The female labour force participation rate stands at 55.2 per cent, revealing that much of the women workforce is underutilised.

While it certainly is a contentious topic, it isn’t hard to correlate the fact that typecasting a person into a gender role inevitably leads to stereotypes that come into play later on in society, as well as in the workforce.

To conclude, there is no room for complacency. The materials with which we use to educate the next generation calls for a revision, beginning with how gender narratives are taught. Stay tuned next week for more on this.

References

Closing the Gender Gap in Malaysia
https://www.jil.go.jp/english/jli/documents/2019/017-03.pdf

UNESCO Data (http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/my)

MOE Quick Facts
(https://www.moe.gov.my/muat-turun/penerbitan-dan-jurnal/terbitan/buku-informasi/2722-quick-facts-2019/file)

The Gender Gap in Malaysian Public Universities: Examining The ‘Lost Boys’
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315464516_The_Gender_Gap_in_Malaysian_Public_Universities_Examining_The_%27Lost_Boys%27

Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015–2025 (https://www.moe.gov.my/menumedia/media-cetak/penerbitan/dasar/1207-malaysia-education-blueprint-2013-2025/file)