KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia should introduce six days of paid childcare leave annually for working mothers and fathers to help address the unequal burden of unpaid care work and prevent parenthood from limiting career opportunities, says Suluh Centre.
Suluh Centre executive director Nadia Nazri said the proposal should form part of a broader care policy covering affordable childcare, flexible working arrangements, parental leave, wages and housing.
She said Malaysian women spent an average of six hours and seven minutes a day on unpaid domestic and care work in 2025, compared with about four hours and 20 minutes for men.
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The 1 hour and 47-minute daily gap amounts to about 651 hours, or more than 81 eight-hour working days, over a year, she said.
“This is not to suggest that caring for a child, preparing a meal or looking after a home is somehow ‘lost’. Care is indispensable. Its value to a family cannot, and should not, be measured by wages alone,” she said.
“The question is not whether care matters. The question is who has the time to carry it.”
Nazri said the unequal distribution of care responsibilities could eventually affect career progression, including opportunities to take on new responsibilities, pursue training, build experience and move into leadership positions.
She cited findings from Suluh Centre’s National Women’s Survey 2025/2026, in which 45.8% of respondents identified the double burden of family care as the biggest barrier to women’s participation in leadership.
She said the issue should be viewed not only as a matter of gender equality but also as an economic concern.
According to the OECD, greater female participation in employment could raise Malaysia’s GDP per capita by about 1.6% within five years, 3.2% over a decade and as much as 6.8% over the longer term, she said.
Nazri said Malaysia had taken steps to support working parents, including maternity leave, seven days of paternity leave and the right for employees to request flexible working arrangements.
However, she said these measures did not fully address the day-to-day challenges faced by parents after parental leave ended.
“A child wakes up sick on a weekday morning. A childcare centre closes unexpectedly. There is a medical appointment, a school matter or an urgent family need that cannot simply be rescheduled outside working hours,” she said.
Such situations were often managed through annual leave, unpaid leave, help from grandparents or adjustments to work schedules, she said.
Nazri said paid childcare leave would give parents an additional option when dealing with such circumstances, without forcing them to sacrifice income or annual leave.
She stressed that the entitlement should apply equally to mothers and fathers.
“If childcare leave is designed primarily as a benefit for women, we risk reinforcing the very assumption we should be trying to change — that care is fundamentally a mother’s responsibility,” she said.
“Care policy must also be fatherhood policy. If we want men to participate more meaningfully at home, our institutions must give them the space to do so.”
Nazri also pointed to Singapore’s approach, where the government announced in August 2026 that childcare leave would increase to between eight and 12 days annually for each working parent, depending on the number of children aged 12 and below.
She said Malaysia did not need to replicate Singapore’s system but could learn from the principle of providing support to families beyond childbirth.
She also proposed a shared funding model involving both employers and the government.
Using a hypothetical worker earning the formal-sector median wage of RM3,000 a month, she said six days of paid childcare leave would cost about RM692 annually.
If employers funded three days and the government funded another three, the cost would be about RM346 per worker for each side.
Nazri acknowledged that the theoretical cost would be significant if all workers qualified and used the full entitlement, but said actual government expenditure would be considerably lower because eligibility would be limited to parents with young children and not all eligible workers would necessarily use the full entitlement.
She argued that the cost of providing childcare support should also be weighed against the economic costs of inadequate support, including experienced employees leaving the workforce, women reducing working hours or declining promotions, and businesses losing skilled workers.
Nazri also linked the issue to Malaysia’s declining fertility rate and ageing population.
With the country’s total fertility rate at about 1.6 children per woman, below the replacement level of 2.1, she said Malaysia needed to consider whether its working environment made it sufficiently practical for people to have and raise children.
“Lower fertility does not necessarily mean Malaysians have stopped wanting families,” she said.
“Perhaps, then, the debate on fertility should not begin by asking people why they are not having more children. Perhaps we should first ask whether we have made it sufficiently possible for them to raise the children they already hope to have.”
Nazri said paid childcare leave alone would not resolve all challenges faced by working parents, but could form part of a wider system of support.
“A country that says families matter must eventually build institutions that make family life possible,” she said.
“Paid childcare leave would not solve every challenge facing working parents. But it would be one meaningful step towards a Malaysia where care is shared more fairly, where parenthood does not unnecessarily narrow a person’s possibilities, and where raising the next generation is understood for what it truly is: a responsibility carried by families, but an investment shared by us all.”
