Call to have 30% women participation in politics not easy: Salleh Keruak
KUALA LUMPUR: The lack of women's participation in political empowerment does not mean that the government discriminates against them, said Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Dr Salleh Said Keruak (pix).
He said the call to have 30% women participation in politics is not as easy as it seems although the Barisan Nasional (BN) government is committed to increasing the number of women involved in politics.
"We can have 30% of all candidates standing either for the general or state elections as women but it will not mean that all them will win.
"Therefore we will fail to meet the target. It may not be good for everyone simply to put 30% candidates as women simply for the sake of meeting a target," he said.
Salleh admitted that only seven of the 71 members of the Sarawak Legislative Assembly were women and only 24 or 10.85 of the 222 MPs in the country were women.
He pointed out that data from the Global Gender Gap Report 2017 by the World Economic Forum (WEF) showed that women were more prominent and competent in other sectors, such as the economy, education and health.
"Some people are only pointing out the lack of women in terms of political empowerment but they have ignored all other aspects of the gender gap report," Salleh said at opening the 'Women Power Talk 2017' programme organised by Wanita Umno today.
The 'Women Power Talk' programme, an annual event by Wanita Umno, was themed being "Advancing U Through Media", gathered women leaders from the political, uniformed, government, non-government organisations and corporate organisations.
Salleh said gender inequality is only in politics and all political parties can take this into account so that women are strong in politics.
The minister said 2013 data showed that 86,798 more women enrolled in universities than men, higher than the 67,734 in 2009.
He said the report placed the women's achievement score above men's in the fields of education (0.991), health (0.977) and the economy (0.654).