Earlier this year, a few of us at Foundation for Shared Impact (FSI) attended an online event where the British Council’s report on The State of Social Enterprise in Hong Kong was released. The research findings struck us as being incongruent with what is really happening in the Hong Kong social impact space.
From our experience in helping our partner companies apply for government funding, and from years of working with underprivileged communities, we know that Hong Kong’s support system for social impact organizations is far from “mature.”. There has been progress, but as the report also pointed out, systemic problems such as racism, lack of gender and ethnic diversity, insufficient transparency in grantmaking procedures, inadequate support for systems-changing solutions etc., continue to exist in the social impact ecosystem.
We realized that if we are serious about driving systems change, we need to hold ourselves accountable. And that is why we decided to host a webinar series as a critical response to the British Council’s report. We welcome people from all spectrums of society and across industries to join the dialogue, so that collectively we can create greater shared impact.
Does the HK Social Impact Space have an Inclusivity Problem?
Our Brace for Impact Webinar series kicked off on 25 March, with the first session on the issue of diversity, inclusivity, and representation in the Hong Kong social impact space. Moderated by Polina Milashevskaya, entrepreneur and digital transformation enabler, the open conversation saw David Bishop, co-founder of FSI and principal lecturer at The University of Hong Kong, and Sanjukta Mukherjee, experienced economist and director of FSI, take turns to share their insights and suggest solutions.
Prior to the webinar, we distributed a survey and collected 29 responses on the diversity, inclusivity, and representation situations in the Hong Kong social impact space. Here are the major findings:
- Inclusivity, diversity, and representation are important for a healthy social impact ecosystem, but the HK social impact space is not sufficiently inclusive, diverse, or representative.
- Funders should have diverse groups of decision makers.
- Social impact organizations should have diverse leadership teams.
- Beneficiaries should be represented in the leadership of social impact organizations.
- There is a range of opinions about board diversity requirements.
Why Do Diversity, Inclusivity, and Representation Matter?
In the Hong Kong social impact space, the traditional perception of leadership is mostly local male. As shown in the British Council’s report, while females made up 57% of total employees at Hong Kong’s social enterprises, the average gender composition of social enterprise boards is 37% female and 63% male. Even when there is gender diversity at the decision-making level, racial and ethnic diversity is lacking. The report also reveals that 65% of social enterprises do not have any representation of beneficiary groups or vulnerable/marginalized/minority groups within their leadership teams, while only 22% of enterprises reported having leadership representation of vulnerable groups.
At times, it isn’t just the lack of diversity and inclusivity – it is racial discrimination in some of the government’s funding bodies. For example, the SIE Fund intentionally and systemically limits the types of beneficiaries who could receive funding support. Case in point: foreign domestic workers, with a population of 400,000 in Hong Kong and contributing to 3.6% of the city’s GDP, are excluded from the beneficiaries of the SIE Fund due to their special conditions of stay.
If actors in the social impact space are serious about tackling systems issues, they need to include diverse voices in decision-making, resource allocation, legislative responses, interventions etc. Meanwhile, decision-making bodies need to prioritize representation and inclusion through participatory grantmaking, to ensure that resources are directed in an equitable way. And this is why beneficiary representation is imperative – it helps decision-makers and leaders understand the barriers faced by disadvantaged communities, so that resources and interventions can be directed towards addressing systemic discrimination.
“Ultimately, it is about equity, which refers to fair distribution of resources, power, and opportunities along gender, race, ethnicity lines and other -isms,” said Sanjukta, an economist who previously worked as a survey specialist for the International Labour Organization and as a consultant at the World Bank. “Increasing the participation of disadvantaged groups in education and in labor markets leads to equalization of opportunities and increased welfare at the national level as estimated by GDP. This establishes that beyond the moral and normative argument, there is a strong economic and business case to increase representation and diversity in all realms of life.”
So, what can be done to increase diversity, inclusivity, and representation in the Hong Kong social impact space? Stay tuned to Part II of this newsletter series!
