Secretary General Lim Guan Eng today said the party’s central executive committee made the decision to adopt the parental leave for fathers and mothers at its meeting last night, after the matter was proposed by the Wanita wing.
“This is to stress the equal importance of both parents in caring for and bringing up their children,” he said in a statement.
“Also, the 3 days paid annual parental leave will encourage mothers to work or stay on paying jobs after marriage.”
He said motherhood and caring for offspring is the main reason for women to drop out from career paths, being paid less and getting discriminated in promotion.
The Penang chief minister said more can be done for working parents to balance paid work and family commitments, but the DAP will start off with this policy on Labour Day on May 1 this year.
DAP Wanita chief Chong Eng, who is also a Penang state executive councillor, had raised the proposal on the basis that many young working parents, especially those without family support in cities, are struggling between paid jobs and caring for their children and family.
“In a patriarchal society that follows the traditional model of gender division of family responsibilities, the father takes care of family livelihood whilst the mother takes care of the children and household,” Lim said.
“The burden of caring for a sick child invariably falls on the mother,” he added.
He said this also partly explained why despite there being more female than male graduates from universities every year for the last two decades, female labour participation rate in the work force is still low at 54% in Malaysia, among the lowest in Southeast Asia.
“Malaysia’s hopes of becoming a developed nation and high-income economy will come to naught if we cannot achieve more than a 60% labour participation rate,” he said, adding that all developed nations have a female labour participation rate of more than 60%.