The promotion of economic opportunitiesfor women is one of the most promising avenues forMalaysia's future development. Closing gaps betweenmen's and women's economic opportunities couldboost Malaysia's income per capita by 26.2 percent.Against this backdrop, the report relies on a comprehensivemixed-methods approach to investigate constraints onimproving women's economic opportunities. It finds thatMalaysia's female labor force participation rate hasrisen significantly in recent years but is still lowcompared to other countries in ASEAN. In addition, there arewide gender gap in access to jobs that pay well and offerbenefits, social protection, and career prospects. Policydirections for improving the economic opportunities forwomen in Malaysia should include: (1) expand theavailability, quality and affordability of child and eldercare to enable more women to stay in the labor market and towork in more productive jobs; (2) strengthen the protectionof informal workers and the productivity of workers andbusiness owners to harness women's full economicpotential; (3) pursue planned reforms of the legalenvironment and strengthen the implementation, monitoringand enforcement of laws and regulations, (4) improve supportfor parents, in line with international legal norms and (5)address gender norms and attitudes in education and amongthe wider population.
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