夏伟文(Har Wai Mun) & 张龙翔(Chong Long Xiang) (24th Feb 2014)
In
a 2004, Florence Jaumotte released a women labor force participation study report for Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s
(OECD). She claimed that women choose between supplying
labor service not only against leisure but also “home production”, which mainly
consist of taking care of (young) children. In Asian traditions, this may even
include responsibility to care for elder family members.
Taking analysis
approach of “labor supply” versus “home production”, factors that affect women
labor participation can be generalized into (i) tradition, (ii) technology,
childcare and work condition, and (iii) policies.
Traditions Rope
Tradition is referred
to activities or practices passed down from previous generations. In Asia, traditions
tend to assigned home production like doing housework, taking care of children
and elders to women. Generally, men are viewed as breadwinner, therefore
commanded a relative superior standing to women. Malay tradition of Adat
Temenggung and Chinese tradition of Confucianism give superior
status to men in patriarchal family structure. Hypothetically,
these put extra barrier for women to choose work over home production.
If traditions see home
production as women’s duty, it also put extra opportunity cost for women if
they choose it. How high this opportunity cost depends on how tradition
thinking of the family are and how pressing is the needs for women to be
available for housework. Higher the opportunity cost, higher salary enticement
needed for women to choose working over home production. As a result, only single
and/or highly educated female stand considerable chance to participate in labor
market. Figure 1a that analyzes and plots data from Statistical Department of
Malaysia may confirm it. The trend line in Figure 1a has an upwards slope, thus
statistically implying a positive relationship between tertiary education
enrollment and female labor participation rate.
Nonetheless, Figures 1b shows a surprisingly negative relationship for
secondary enrollment and female to male labor participation rate.
Common thought is that
women work until they get married or luckier work until they have child.
Perhaps, having at least a diploma or degree qualification is an exception. Otherwise,
tradition is like a rope that tied down women to home production. Question is
does Malaysia’s Economic Transformation (ETP) has plan to relieve traditions
barrier for higher female labor participation rate?
Figure 1b: Secondary Education Enrollment vs. Female Labor
Participation
ETP does aims to create job opportunities for skilled labor.
Projected new job creation for 2020 by qualification are 24% for
vocational/certificates, 22% for diploma, 22% for degree, 7% for
Master/professional and 3% for PhD. Jobs creation for unskilled worker is
projected at 22%. However, no specific action plan targeted specifically to
improve neither women education enrollment nor labor participation.
Technology, Childcare Service and Work Condition
Improvement in
household technologies, information technologies and work condition are
favorable factors to encourage female labor participation. Available of many
home appliances and automation in affordable prices like washing machine, cloth
dryer, auto vacuum cleaner and microwave have decrease time needed to perform
household works. Commercial childcare center, which also provide early
childhood education are available but may be unaffordable for the poor.
Early childhood
education has been allocated two “Entry Point Projects” (EPP) in National Key
Economic Area (NKEA) for education. Availability of foreign maids and/or
elderly parents that can help to take care of some household work and childcare
may help free up women to participate in labor force.
Information technology
and increasing job opening of freelance, part-time and flexible work hour should
greatly facilitate female participate in both labor market and home production.
Reforming Policies
Tax
and childcare support
In
term of tax, Malaysia does not have much encouragement to increase labor
participation among women. Working wife can claim for personal relief of RM9000.
If they did not work, the working husband can claim wife relief of RM3000. There
is no relatively favorable tax treatment of second earners, which is given in
countries like Austria, Czech Republic, France, Mexico, Portugal, South Korea,
Spain and Turkey.
The
more attractive motivation is the salary women can earn if they work. Therefore,
tax policies should be reformed to (i) give favorable tax treatment for second
earners, and (ii) ensure salary of Malaysian workers, particularly working
mother is not being discriminated and high enough to beat cost of living plus
extra expenses to take care of their household tasks. In addition, childcare
subsidies could be given since there are empirical evidences from some research
that claim its effectiveness. According to OECD Economic Studies No.37
(2003/2), child benefits increase the disposable income of families with two
children. Countries with biggest increment include Hungary (21%), Austria
(18%), Luxembourg (17%), Belgium (15%), Czech Republic (12%) and Germany (12%).
From
company perspective, revenue expenditure incurred in providing childcare benefit
to employee is deductible. This may encourage company provide childcare
facilities but how many company has done it? To what extend the childcare
facilities in the office can help working mothers? How about giving long maternity
leave, parental leave and childcare leave to help women to reconcile work and
family life? The same OECD studies reported variety degree of paid leave
entitlement across its member countries. Countries that offer long paid leaves
for mothers include France (73 weeks), Slovak Republic (59), Hungary (58), Finland
(55) Denmark (42) and Sweden (40). Australia and United States do not have paid
leaves while New Zealand only offers it recently. International Labor Organization suggested 14 weeks maternity
leaves. In Malaysia, materiality leaves is 8 weeks only.
Public preschool
Availability of ample public kindergarten is also
important to boost female labor participation as well as lessen the burden of
poor citizen. Indeed, having national-wide free preschool education has been
proposed by President of United States, Barack Obama in early 2013. He argued
that poor family who cannot afford preschool for their children may put their
children at a permanent disadvantage. Providing preschool also reduce the needs
of women to take care of their child at home. Yet, free public preschool may be
in conflict with ETP on education where private education institutions play big
roles in every level of education. Solution could be as simple as government put
a legal obligation for private education institutions, especially those
preschool operators to offer certain percentage of intake places as free for
the poor.
Flexible hour or Part Time Jobs
Flexible
working hour arrangement, especially those jobs that can be work from home are
getting more and more popular. A check through Wikipedia found some interesting
information. In 2003, the United Kingdom
government introduced legislation that
gave parents of children under 6 years of age, or the parents of disabled
children under 18, the right in law to request a flexible
working arrangement from their employer.
Alternative
to flexible work time is part time job. For women that have young children, working
part time is preferable particularly if childcare is less affordable. There are
no data for part time employment in Malaysia. For other countries, data from
World Bank revealed higher percentage of part time job participation for women
as compared to men. For a random selection of 22 countries, female part-time
employment as percentage of total part time employment is over 50% (see Figure
2).
Figure 2: Female Part-time Employment (% of Total
Part-time Employment) for 2010
Austria recorded 80.6% percentage.
Among countries with high percentage include Switzerland (80%), Germany (78.7%)
and Spain (76.2%). Part time job also has its disadvantage such as low job
security, poor wages, no training and lack of other employment benefits and
rights. Thus, any policy to encourage part time should come with plans to
ensure proper working condition and human rights.
Conclusion
Women
can be an asset to our economic growth if their labor participation is increase
significantly. To achieve that, we need to change some of our traditions and
reform policies.
[Chinese version published at Nanyang Press, 24th February 2014. Available online at http://www.nanyang.com/node/601914. This English version may be slightly different from the Chinese online/printed newspaper version]
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