Institutional and family support as an indicator to measure women’s decision to remain in the labour force / Rohayu Abdul Razak, Geetha Subramaniam and Nurul Azwa Mohamed Khadri

The phenomenon of women dominating men in higher institutions is a global issue in the educational sector as the number of female students are greater than male students. According to the Minister of Higher Education, Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin, the total number of female student enrolment is far greater than male students in our local institutions of higher learning and for the 2012/2013 intake; female students constitute 65.8% while male students constitute 34.2% (Ministry of Higher Education, 2012). Unfortunately, these numbers turn into opposite when it comes to the labour force. However, this increase in the number of female students’ enrolment is not seen in terms of women’s participation in the labour force in recent years. According to the 2013 report, the total number of female labour force participation rate is at 49.5% which means that slightly less than half of women of working age are employed (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2013). Women’s participation is relatively high at ages between 25 to 34 years old and tends to decline after 35 years old and above. This number shows that in Malaysia women are still under presented in the labour force compared to other Asian countries such as Singapore and Thailand, where participation rates are high which is at 59% and 64.4% for each country (World Bank, 2012). This indicates that more than half women in both countries are participating in the labour force and indirectly will reduce unemployment problem and help to improve their standard of livings because they are able to help their spouses to increase their income. Nowadays, many facilities and agenda had been implemented to encourage women to continue working until retirement age in the labour force, but there are still many women who do not prefer to return to work force after getting married and having children. This, perhaps happens because women are unable to juggle between managing household chores and nurturing of children. This situation leads to a great loss to the nation because our governments have invested a huge amount of capital in order to have a productivity human capital. Moreover, insufficient human capital will lead to more immigrant labours fill the labour shortage and this will indirectly affect our nation’s economy and will result in a national outflow income. Thus, this study conducted to determine how important is institutional support and family support in influencing women’s decision to remain in the labour force and the reason behind their early retirement. This is important as Malaysia moves to a developed nation status and the use of our human capital in terms of female labour is important for a nation’s development. In order to examine women’s decision to remain in the labour force, 10 questions are adapted from previous study and distributed to the working women in the corporate sectors. Using the economic theory of Labor Supply, the measurement will be able to gauge to what extent women’s decision to remain in the labour force and what is the significant factors that influence them to exit before retirement age.