Level of gender equality improved by 0.2 pct in 2022 - DOSM

Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Dr. Mohd Uzir Mahidin said three states recorded the highest MGGI scores, namely Putrajaya with a score of 0.792, followed by Kuala Lumpur (0.767), and Labuan (0.736).

"Based on the MGGI score for 2022, we are ranked 93rd out of 146 countries globally. At the same time, among East Asia and Pacific countries, Malaysia is ranked 11th in 2022.

"Malaysia leads Timor-Leste (0.693), Brunei Darussalam (0.693), South Korea (0.680), China (0.678), Vanuatu (0.678), Fiji (0.650), Myanmar (0.650), and Japan (0.647)," he said in a statement on Women's Empowerment Statistics in Selected Domains, Malaysia, 2023, today.

MGGI identifies the gap between women and men in four sub-indices, economic opportunities and participation, educational attainment, health and well-being, and political empowerment.

A score with a value of 1.0 (100 percent) indicates that gender equality has been achieved.

Meanwhile, Mohd Uzir said women outperformed men in the educational attainment sub-index with a score of 1.067, health and well-being (0.961), while economic opportunities and participation scored 0.644.

"The rate of female labour force participation (FLFP) is still low at 55.8 percent in 2022 compared to other Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam (75.2 percent) and Singapore (73.2 percent).

"Political empowerment recorded the lowest score of 10.2 percent (score 0.102), indicating the potential for increased representation and empowerment of women in politics," he said.