Are Working Mothers Adequately Protected? A Comparative Analysis of Legal Frameworks in Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

The statistics of working mothers in Malaysia are rising every year. Based on previous researches, the data of women who stopped working due to issue in child care are high. Nonetheless, the working mothers are not sufficiently protected under the domestic law. There has been lack of recognition of their legal rights, for example, rights relating to breastfeeding support and prohibiting gender discrimination. The situation is the same in public sector as well as in private sector. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the policies and laws governing working mothers in Malaysia and to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the policies and laws by benchmarking with other jurisdictions specifically the United Kingdom and Australia. This paper adopts the doctrinal research method through the governing statutes, reported cases and scholarly articles as well as comparative research method through benchmarking with the other jurisdictions. This paper finds that Malaysia has policies in promoting women involvement in employment and the laws governing working mothers in Malaysia are improving throughout the years.