Low wages impact women more

The Star

10-05-2025

THE gap between the minimum wage and the actual cost of living is more pronounced among women workers due to the existing gender pay gap.
And as there are more women employed as unskilled labour, such as cleaners and helpers – who make up most of the minimum wage earners segment – the living wage remains a further reach from their existing minimum wage, says Gopalan K. Papachan, the executive director of Empower, a non-governmental organisation working on women's rights and equality.
'Their security of employment is also quite low. At the same time, they will be at the lower end of the heap due to, among others, gender stereotyping practices (such as physical strength pre-requisites) that discourage them from taking up vocations that pay more,' says Gopalan.
In February, the minimum wage was revised to RM1,700 a month from RM1,500. However, this wage still falls short of workers' actual needs, especially for single mothers.
It remains well below Bank Negara's 2018 recommendation of a living wage of RM6,500 for a family with children living in an urban area, specifically Kuala Lumpur.
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The gap is also evident in the Employees Provident Fund's Belanjawanku 2024/2025 guide – for example, the estimated budget for a single parent with one child in the Klang Valley (with the highest cost of living estimate) is RM5,120 while in Alor Setar (the lowest) it's about RM3,970 to cover basic expenses like rent, transport and food.
Gopalan points to the Depart-ment of Statistics' median monthly salary for women in the formal sector which was RM2,700 in June 2024 and RM3,000 in December 2024.
'That means half of all salaried women in Malaysia get no more than this. This is barely a living wage,' he says, adding that almost all of those engaged in housework or family duties – about three million – are also women, whose unpaid contributions remain invisible in our political and economic systems.
Citing the May Day Declaration of Malaysian workers issued by the civil societies on May 1, Gopalan urges the government to increase the minimum wage to at least RM2,000 and introduce a universal basic income of RM1,000.
Earlier this year, Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri said tackling wage issues requires a multipronged approach by various stakeholders.
She was commenting on the '2023 Graduate Statistics Report' by the Department of Statistics Malaysia, which found female graduates on average earn RM900 less than their male counterparts despite having equivalent academic qualifications.
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To illustrate the grinding increase of wages, Khazanah Research Institute research associate Shazrul Ariff Suhaimi says the key economic and structural factors contributing to the general wage gap and the actual cost of living are primarily due to the slow growth of wages for the labour force.
'When we examined the wage distribution between 2010 and 2019, we found that for the bottom 50% of workers, there was an average annual increase of only RM56 per worker in real terms.'
Gopalan says perceptions of the types of jobs that should only be dominated by one gender persist.
'I mean you don't see a woman working as a plumber or a carpenter. This is all skilled work that can extract good value and a good source of income for women as they do for men.
'There are also other jobs such as electricians, welders and riggers. Women can do them all, especially with the aid of technology. It's not about masculinity and masculine strength. It's about working in teams and doing work that leverages on technology.'
Other than just looking into the wage system, the government should also be deliberate in setting up women to participate more and remain in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, Gopalan adds.
'There are a lot of women university graduates that, due to the patriarchal setup in this country, choose to get married and leave the workforce.
'There's a net benefit for women to participate at all levels in every vocation in this country. We are not giving them that fair level of income.'