Global Peace Forum A Platform Towards Empowering Women - Noorainee

PETALING JAYA (Selangor, Malaysia), April 19 (Bernama) -- The Global Peace Women forum will be a platform to explore new innovative approaches to empower women in contributing peace and nation-building, said Deputy Prime Minister's wife, Noorainee Abdul Rahman. She said in Malaysia, efforts to forge greater gender equality had resulted in Malaysian women achieving significant progress in key socio-economic areas, since Malaysia gained independence in 1957. "Malaysian women have benefited from increased access to education and training as indicated by the improvement in their literacy rate, and net enrollment at all levels of education," she said. She said this in her speech before launching the Inaugural Forum of Global Peace Women themed "Women in Peace-building and Raising a Generation of Character" at the Sunway Resort Hotel and Spa (Sunway Resort) in Bandar Sunway, here on Wednesday night. Noorainee said, literacy rate amongst Malaysian women and girls are 99 percent, a very high level not only in Asia, but globally as well and with the greater access to education Malaysian women have also progressed remarkably as economic participants, inline with the direction of he country's economic development. "However, men mostly dominate the leadership positions of the mixed groups in non-profit organisations compared with women. Therefore this should be an area we want to see more development (increasing more women in such organisations). "The role of women in society is off utmost importance and we should not underestimate the power of women, and we must know that if we want to raise a better next generation, we have to start from the mother," she said. -- BERNAMA