“Bocor” issue is currently heavily being discussed in weblogs or newspapers such as here, here, here, here, here and here. But, don’t miss this maternity leave. Can’t find this piece of news in other newspaper but Chinese daily (Sin Chew).

Senator Datuk Wira Syed Ali Syed Abbas ~

Proposal to increase the maternity leave to 84 days will lead more women to be unemployed and not getting married.

I oppose the increase in maternity leave because I care about women. When the private sector figures out women will have many maternity leave, they will not hire them.

Increase of maternity leave will cause many female graduate students unemployed after their graduation, Due to long maternity leave; women may also fear employers may not want to hire them therefore; they don’t want to get married.

If women fight for an increase in maternity leave in order to get more time to care for their children, then it is better for them be a full-time housewives.

Let’s do some comparison here.

Malaysia has 26 million populations and Finland has 5 million populations. However, the maternity leave in Finland is up to 3 years and the employers CAN NOT fire the female staff who taking her maternity leave up to 3 years. Unless she resigns from current position if not her position is secure and remains.

Don’t listen to me, let’s other tell you

Women who are integrated into the Finnish social system get 10 months of maternity leave while getting paid 70% of their former salary. After these 10 months they may stay at home until the child reaches the age of 3. In this time they get the so called home care allowance which is considerably less: It more or less equals the costs for a place in a day care. The working place is save for the entire 3 years

A country with 5 million populations can offers such long maternity leave to female and yet -

Switzerland, Finland and Sweden are the world’s most competitive economies according to The Global Competitiveness Report 2006-2007, released by the World Economic Forum on 26 September 2006. Denmark, Singapore, the United States, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom complete the top ten list, but the United States shows the most pronounced drop, falling from first to sixth.

What about the points highlighted by Senator in the Senate? He cares about female; how about propose a set of acts such as The Act on Equality between Women and Men. Possible?

TechTags Plugin [ maternity leave | women | senator | the senate Malaysia | gender equality ]

• Maternity leave
• All bloggers are liars?
• Discard bias against women
• Durex (M’sia) looking for condom testers.
• Highway toll rates 20%-60% hike!
• PM: How can you compare grape with an apple?
• “All bloggers are liars” a Joke?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Parliament, Politic, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Thank you very much for your time and your visit. I write my feeling and opinion in this blog. Therefore, if you don't like it, you have the right to leave this blog. No one can force you continue to read or access to this blog. Just try understand what blog is, will you? You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.