“From 2014 to 2015, women holding senior management positions in Malaysia have increased in number from 29% to 34%,” said Suaram moderator Dobby Chew at the human rights organisation’s launch today of its annual human rights report for last year.

These findings were cited from the 2016 Hays Asia Salary Guide, which also found that 37% of Malaysian management positions overall were filled by women despite the Global Gender Gap Report by the World Economic Forum ranking Malaysia at the 111th place out of 145 countries, dropping from the 114th position in 2014.

Suaram acknowledged that much work remained to be done in attaining gender equality, noting that many Malaysians still retained sexist ideals about a woman’s role in society.

The report cited a Unicef media feature entitled “Gender equality in Malaysia: Fact or Fiction?” in 2015 that found that a majority of the respondents believed that men had a higher status in Malaysian society.

“In the workplace, the majority 46% (27% are neutral and 27% agree) do not think that women are treated equally.”

However, Suaram remained highly critical of gender inequality in the Malaysian Parliament.

“Apart from the current under-representation of women politicians in Parliament, with women accounting for only 10.4% of the total number of MPs, some male parliamentarians habitually hurl sexist slurs against women parliamentarians in the heat of debate,” the overview said.

It gave as an example the incident last year that saw Baling MP Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim calling Batu Kawan MP Kasthuri Patto “pondan” (transvestite) when the latter refused to let him interrupt her speech on the deaths of the seven Orang Asli children in Gua Musang.

“We note that Datuk Seri Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim is a repeat offender.

“He was the same MP who said in April that non-Muslim women should not be invited to mosques because they ‘mungkin bocor’,” civil rights NGO Empower had said in a statement last November, referring to how Kulai MP Teo Nie Ching was invited for a function in a surau.