At the soft launch of World Women Leadership Summit 2023, Rina said the low political participation among Malaysian women affected the nation’s ranking in Southeast Asian and global gender equality indexes.

She also pointed out that Malaysian women only made up 14% of MPs.

“As such, the ministry has decided to hold a women’s leadership forum, to which we will invite all political leaders, government and opposition alike, to discuss greater women representation in politics,” she said at an event here today.

“With all this talk about the general election, it is timely to field more female candidates so they may become MPs who can push for the creation and implementation of much-needed policies that empower women.”

She said her ministry will work with the National Council of Women’s Organisations (NCWO) to organise the event at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia next week.

Later, at a press conference, Rina said she would like to see a 30% increase in overall allocations for her ministry in Budget 2023.

She said the initiatives her ministry had proposed for the annual budget included childcare for working mothers.

“Based on what we heard on the ground, we discovered that many women did not enter the workforce despite having degrees because they needed to care for their children,” she said.