Internet accessibility and willingness to work among educated women in Malaysia

Female with tertiary education in Malaysia contributes only 32 percent to total women participated in the labor market. It is claimed that the main reason for educated women dropping out from labor force is the difficulty to balance between career and family lives. The emergence of the internet is deemed as a partial solution to this problem. High internet accessibility would be able to help women to manage and balance between family and work. Based on information collected from 943 women with tertiary education, this paper aims at exploring how educated women could benefit from internet access at their homes. We examine how access to the internet could help to balance responsibilities of career and family life among working women. For those who are not working, the research explores the extent to which they are confident that access to the internet can help them return to work without leaving the care of the household. The findings from this study help us to understand how internet accessibility might affect the willingness to work among women with higher educational attainment.