This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on May 20, 2024 - May 26, 2024

Access to education is one of the most important factors in ensuring gender inclusion, says Datuk Kathleen Chew, programme director at the YTL Foundation.

However, school lockdowns as a result of Covid-19 affected the ability of girls to continue pursuing education across the East Asia and Pacific region. This is one of the observations in the report titled “The state of gender inclusion in Asia-Pacific’s regulatory landscape”, led by AVPN's Asia Gender Network, was co-signed by Chew and commissioned by the RPG Foundation, YTL Foundation and social enterprise Mangosteen in 2023.

The report sheds light on key areas such as access to education, workforce participation, political participation and access to healthcare.

“One of the things that struck me when I first commissioned and read [the report], was that there are 1.2 million girls in the region that are not returning to school after the pandemic, on top of the 15 million who were already not enrolled pre-pandemic,” says Chew.

When families lost their source of income during the pandemic, the societal norm was to prioritise boys over girls, according to the report.

“The boys might still go to school, but the girls will stay at home. And then the girls help [their households] in the rural areas, [performing] labour at home. Poverty is the main issue,” she explains.

“In Malaysia, we know that in the rural areas, safety is [a problem] when schools are far away, and girls have to walk for miles to school each day and back. That also is a contributing factor [to girls dropping out of school].”

According to the report, if every girl receives 12 years of quality education, women’s overall lifetime earnings could increase by US$15 trillion (RM71.6 trillion) to US$30 trillion globally.

Additionally, a child whose mother can read is 50% more likely to live past the age of five, 50% more likely to be immunised and twice as likely to go to school. These illustrate the real urgency for action, and the scale and severity of the issues.

“An educated girl will bring up healthier children and she will exponentially improve the life of a family. Girls dropping out of school will deprive them and their community of these benefits,” says Chew.

The report also points out that women’s equal political participation is important to demonstrate that they have the right and ability to participate in shaping their countries and communities.

When women occupy roles of political authority, it encourages other women and girls to recognise the value of political engagement in ensuring justice and enacting systemic change. It also helps women to believe it is in their capacity to make a difference in their communities and societies.

“[The report] says it will take another 40 years before there is a kind of equal representation of women in politics. That’s going to be a driving factor that will help us with tackling all the other issues,” says Chew.

She brings up the example of the recent change to the citizenship law for children born to Malaysian mothers.

“My colleague returned after being in Australia for some years, and she brought her child back. The child was probably less than two years old at the time. It was so difficult for her because the child only got a one-month visa because she wasn’t born in Malaysia and she was of a foreign nationality. Every month, my poor colleague would have to take her out of the country and then come back again,” she says.

With the amendment to the existing citizenship laws, foreign-born children of Malaysian mothers and their non-Malaysian spouses automatically receive citizenship, ending years of struggle for many.

Chew notes that apart from not depriving a woman of her rights, such amendments give children access to education, healthcare and employment.

“That is why I think it is important to have high-quality women in leadership positions in the government. I think this is what is driving the improvement.” 

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