KUCHING: Research on women in decision making (management and professional) in the public sector in Sarawak showed progress has been made since 2011.
But all sectors fell short of the 30 per cent target by 2015, said Minister of Welfare, Women and Community Wellbeing, Datuk Fatimah Abdullah.
“Overall, in 2015, the state civil service had the lowest number (10.2 per cent) of female decision-makers while they hovered between 18 and 19 per cent in he other sectors,” she told a press conference after meeting academics on the subject at the DUN session here yesterday.
“This was reflected in the ratio of male to female decision makers. The State Civil Service had the highest ratio of 8.8:1 while the rest between 4.2-4.5:1.”
Fatimah explained that women decision makers holding Jusa (salary grade) in 2015 from the highest to the lowest in the local authorities showed 100 per cent were women in the federal department and federal statutory bodies, 25 per cent women with a man to woman ratio of 3:1.
She added that in statutory bodies, the figure was 15.4 per cent women (5.5 men to 1 woman) and in the state civil 12.2 per cent hold Jusa grade (7.2 men to 1 woman).
Fatimah also disclosed that the bottlenecks for the shortage of women in decision making position in the federal departments, federal statutory and state civil services were because they were stuck between Grade 48 and 52 and between Grade 52and 54 of their salaries.
In the local authorities, the bottlenecks in the local authorities are between grades 44-48, 48-52 and 52 -54, in the state statutory bodies are those with grade 54 and not more than Jusa C. All other pay grades were below grade 54 in state statutory bodies which had more than 30 per cent representation of women.
Fatimah explained that the objective of the research by the academics was two-fold: to identify the bottlenecks in the promotion of women to the higher rungs of the public sector, and to provide baseline data for future comparison after implementation of Sarawak Civil Transformation Initiatives and Action Plan (SCS 10-20).
She said despite having identified the bottle neck and the progress of women in decision making, it was still dominated by men at the moment.
To come out with findings on the bottle necks, a total of 177 government agencies were surveyed and data collected between 2011 and 2015 for various sectors, except the State Civil Service for which data collected from 2012 to 2015 were most complete so 2012 was taken as the starting point instead.
Also at the press conference were Permanent Secretary to the Ministry Datin Megir Gumbek and director of Welfare Department, Noriah Ahmad.