Study: Men the stumbling block
Published on: Friday, May 13, 2016
Kota Kinabalu: At the current rate of change, it will take Malaysia 80 years to achieve the 30pc target for women in decision-making in the corporate sector.UKM's Tun Fatimah Hashim Women's Leadership Centre (TFHWLC) Endowment Chair, Tan Sri Datuk (Dr) Rafiah Salim revealed this in her recent Public Lecture on Man Matters to Achieve 30pc Women Target in Decision-Making in the Public and Private Sectors."From the study done on Directors by PricewaterhouseCoopers, if there are no interventions, it will take us 80 years to achieve the target. Not in my generation, not in your generation. That's how bad it is.ADVERTISEMENT "So that's why we need to intervene. With intervention in the Government Service, we can achieve the 30pc goal. It's the GLCs (Government-linked Companies) and universities. And honestly, I am not being biased but the stumbling-block is the men because men see it as a threat, I think," she said in her presentation.According to Dr Rafiah, she kept telling companies that they only need to create a new director's post. "Please don't put a woman to replace a man. Keep the men there but create another post for the woman. ADVERTISEMENT Of course, companies can afford it because they make billions. Unfortunately, the men are not doing it," she lamented.For this reason, the Endowment Chair expressed the need to persuade the men, saying "We must work towards a paradigm shift of the men, we need the buy-in."
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Replying to a question from the audience as to when we can attain the 30pc women target, Dr Rafiah said: "I can't give you the magic answer as to when. Our target is 2016. 2016 is nearly halfway gone. We are nowhere near there."Back in 2011, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had announced the policy of 30pc target for women in decision-making positions in the corporate sector in five years' time (that is, 2016).In 2012, selected Sabah women went through the required stringent training for corporate boardroom positions under the Women Directors' Training Programme (WDTP) implemented at that time.Then Minister of Community Development and Consumer Affairs, Datuk Azizah Mohd Dun was instrumental in getting the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Institute for the Empowerment of Women (NIEW) to organise training courses for potential board directors in Sabah. NIEW is an agency under the Federal Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development.Dr Rafiah herself, among others, came to Sabah to jointly conduct the training stint.The women, including CEOs, had high expectations of being appointed to sit on the board of directors (BOD) of government-linked companies (GLCs) or public-listed companies, but to no avail.In conjunction with International Women's Day this year (March 8), the PM called on public-listed companies (PLCs) to get more women involved in policy- and decision-making positions.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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Saying that women only held 15.6pc of such positions (in the corporate sector), he said "more needs to be done in the public-listed companies"."I urge the industry leaders to do more, to take the next step, to break the glass ceiling and implement gender-diversity policies," he was quoted as saying on his blog.