Women labor force participation in Malaysia labor market

From the early 1980s, the participation of women in the labor market is less than 50 percent compared to men. The women's labor force participation rate is an important factor that can influence both the present and future well being of the economy. Independent variables that has been selected are education, fertility rate, unemployment rate, population of women, foreign workers and as well as GDP. This study used time series data of 1982 to
2011. The objective of this study are i) to investigate the trends of Women Labor Force Participation Rate (WLFPR) in Malaysia and compared it with the selected variables. ii) to study the influence of the six macroeconomics
variables on WLFPR and iii) to examine the relationship between Total Fertility Rate (TFR) and WLFPR. The results show that only education and population have significant influence on WLFPR. The Granger Causality test shows that there is no direction of causality between WLFPR and TFR. The implementation of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in Malaysia put education as an important tool in the fight against poverty and restructuring of society