Students in public higher education institutions in Malaysia 2013-2022, by gender

In 2022, around 282,000 male students and more than 405,000 female students were enrolled in public higher institutions. While the number of male students enrolled had steadily decreased since 2019, there was still a significantly higher number of females than male students. This reflected the worldwide trend of more women entering higher education than men. High enrollment numbers, low workforce participation rates Despite this, the realities of gender inequality were felt soon after graduation. In 2022, women were still underrepresented in the workforce, where the labor force participation rate of male graduates was significantly higher than that of females. The average female employee still earned less than the average male employee, and once married, almost half of these women stopped participating in the workforce.Importance of women in the workforceThe deficit in female economic contribution was reflected in a 2021 survey of the business sector in Malaysia, where at that time around 27 percent of all board members were female. The expectations on women to carry out the traditional role of caregiver in the family could only go so far to explain these statistics. Many Malaysians seemed to be aware that more needed to be done to address gender inequality in the business sector. To meet the challenges of Industry 4.0, Malaysia cannot afford to lose the contribution of its increasingly highly-educated and highly-skilled women in the workforce.

于2022年，约282,000名男性学生与超过405,000名女性学生被录取至公立高等教育机构。尽管自2019年以来男性学生的录取人数持续下降，但女性学生的人数仍显著多于男性。此现象反映了全球女性高等教育入学率高于男性的普遍趋势。高入学率与低劳动力参与率并存。尽管如此，性别不平等的现实在毕业不久后便显现出来。2022年，女性在劳动力市场中仍处于代表性不足的状态，男性毕业生的劳动力参与率显著高于女性。女性员工的平均收入仍低于男性员工的平均收入，并且一旦婚嫁，其中近半数女性将停止参与劳动力市场。女性在劳动力市场中的重要性不容忽视。2021年对马来西亚商业部门的一项调查显示，当时所有董事会成员中女性占比约为27%。对女性承担家庭传统护理角色的期待仅能部分解释这些统计数据。许多马来西亚人似乎意识到，为解决商业领域的性别不平等问题，需要采取更多措施。面对第四次工业革命的挑战，马来西亚无法承受失去其日益高学历、高技能女性劳动力贡献的损失。