It’s official: out of 187 countries examined by the World Bank, only six countries provide women with the same opportunities and legal rights as men. The new report, which covers everything from property ownership and asset inheritance to job protections, running a business, marriage, movement and travel, pay, and personal safety, has found that while no nation examined a decade ago met all the criteria laid out by the World Bank in measuring gender equality, 131 economies have introduced 274 reforms to laws and regulations since then, with Sub-Saharan Africa being the top reformer, having passed 71 different laws that allowed women to start jobs and provided them with recourse from workplace harassment and domestic violence.
However, In 18 countries, husbands can still legally prevent their wives from working; in 49 countries, there are no laws to protect women from domestic violence; and while women now hold more than 30% of seats in national parliament in at least one chamber in 46 countries, women’s representation in national parliaments is still low at 23.7%.
According to the UN, 750 million women and girls globally were married before the age of 18. In China, where the one-child policy and preference for boys has created a huge gender imbalance, the over 40 million men expected to reach marrying age next year are the reason women and girls from Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos are being trafficked to China and forced into marriage.
In the case of Cambodia, while traffickers were previously Chinese or out-of-town Cambodians, family members and relatives are now recruited as “brokers”. Typically earning an annual income of US$1,200, families often collude with traffickers to get up to $3,000 for sending a girl to China. “The brokers look for people who are in debt. First they try to convince the daughters, and then they influence the mothers. It’s always about money,” said Teng Seng Han, a monitor with the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association committed to repatriating “brides”.
In the UK as well, children are tricked into trips abroad and forced to marry men they have never met. Deprived of education, these young girls and women are at a higher risk of early pregnancy, their children are less likely to grow up healthy, therefore perpetuating generations of poverty. Additionally, girls with no education are three times as likely to marry by the age of 18 as those with a secondary or higher education. The good news is, the world is now a step closer to ending child marriage.
Women represent half of the world’s population and therefore half of its potential. And yet, in 2017, only 32 companies on the Fortune 500 list were run by female CEOs, and the Women in the Workplace report of that same year found that only one in every five executives was female.
Many studies show that gender diversity can help businesses and economies thrive. For example, a McKinsey Global Institute report found that advancing women’s equality can add US$12 trillion — and as much as US$28 trillion — to the global GDP by 2025. Gender diversity creates a self-fulfilling cycle for businesses too, according to a research by a professor at Harvard Business School, which studied 1,069 leading firms across 35 countries and 24 industries, and found that gender diversity relates to more productive companies, as measured by market value and revenue, only in contexts where gender diversity is normatively accepted as important. This should not come as a surprise, as now we know that 61% of women take gender diversity in the company’s leadership into consideration when deciding where to work. Moreover, a company that values diversity encourages diverse idea exchange, and gender diversity serves as an indicator to investors that the firm is well-run. Companies and employers looking to future-proof their workforce may be interested to know that while women are more likely to lose their jobs than men in the age of automation, women are also more likely to possess the human skills that are indispensable in handling tasks that robots can’t, suggesting their higher readiness for the future workplace.
Businesses are by no means the only ones benefiting from gender diversity. In a time when sustainable development is imperative for future generations to survive and thrive, women’s leadership in driving SDGs is indispensable. A study has found that for every additional woman appointed to a corporate board, the company experienced an average 1.5% reduction in risk of being sued for breaching environmental laws. For some women, especially those in marginalized communities, being at the forefront of climate change discussions and mitigation is born out of need, as shifting climate patterns, natural disasters and climate-related health impacts take a greater toll on women in general.
Changing times
The latest “Women in Technology Leadership” report by Silicon Valley Bank finds that among tech and healthcare founders and executives primarily in the US, the UK, China and Canada, just 56% of startups have at least one woman in an executive position, and only 40% have at least one woman on the board of directors, with startups with a female founder still facing more challenges in raising capital.
In Hong Kong, less than half of the companies see gender diversity as a business priority, and 9 out of every 10 women report barriers to reaching their career aspirations, according to the Hong Kong Female Talent Pipeline Study, done in partnership between Meraki Executive Search & Consulting and The University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Business and Economics (HKU FBE). “The corporate setting has to change, I don’t think it works any more. The work structure we know today was created by men for men. Women now work in that environment. We need to fundamentally think about how organisations are structured, how we develop a structure of inclusion, how we deal with calling out bad behaviour,” said Kirti Lad, executive director of Meraki Executive Search & Consulting, who also runs the Women’s Directorship Programme with Meraki’s other executive director, Sophie Gray.
Female students consistently outperform males in all empirical measurements, admissions tests, cumulative grade point average scores and hiring statistics, according to David Bishop, a principal lecturer at the HKU FBE who was also involved in the Hong Kong Female Talent Pipeline Study. “But something happens in Hong Kong that is not seen in other places. It seems to be a cultural or some other barrier that inhibits their progression at a certain point. Sometimes it’s cultural or based on family, clearly based on some level of prejudice. It’s also policy generated … they don’t have things in place to allow women to succeed,” said Bishop.
But things are changing, albeit slowly. Among FSI’s portfolio companies are social purpose businesses that are founded and led by capable and inspirational women: Dr. Zoe Fortune, CEO of CMHA HK, a business-led and expert-guided alliance that aims to create a culture of good mental health for workers in Hong Kong; Htet Thiri Shwe, founder of MYEO, a for-profit social enterprise dedicated to easing Myanmar youths through personal, educational, and professional development challenges; Natalie Chan, founder and CEO of OWN Academy, a 21st-century education solution for the future of work that matches young individuals with meaningful work experiences; Karola Horvath Szovati and Shirin Staerkle, co-founders of Twopresents, an award-winning social enterprise and an online invitation platform with a charitable twist; Michelle Chan, founder of Weava, a research tool for students to highlight, organize, and create their research documents all in one place; and Priyanka Gothi, founder of Wise at Work, which is committed to upskilling retired professionals and connecting them with opportunities at social purpose companies.
Studies show that philanthropy or social enterprise focused on empowering women are among the most impactful, as women share those blessings — whether money, education, sanitation, etc. — with those around them. What this means is that helping a woman is actually helping several people at the same time. Many of FSI’s programs specialize in women empowerment, in particular EmpowerU, which empowers foreign domestic workers through education. These foreign domestic workers contributed US$12.6 billion to Hong Kong’s economy last year, representing 3.6% of the city’s GDP, and yet they have the lowest level of financial inclusion among foreign domestic workers in the region. Support this fundraising campaign to help EmpowerU provide 500 students with a $500 scholarship each.
When we talk about gender parity, empowerment of women shouldn’t be the sole focus. The empowerment of men is just as important, so as to enable them to challenge prevailing social norms that lead to gender imbalances by adopting new roles and behaviors as men. Men who support women’s pursuit of their career, by taking over what are traditionally deemed women-specific roles, can help societies move closer towards achieving gender parity.
Among the early trailblazers in challenging prevailing social norms and enabling equal opportunities for women is the late husband of US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Martin Ginsburg, who learnt to cook because he realized early on that his wife had no intention on improving her poor cookery skills. He famously said, “I think that the most important thing I have done is to enable Ruth to do what she has done.” His support was acknowledged by Justice Ginsburg in her confirmation hearing testimony in 1993: “I have had the great fortune to share life with a partner truly extraordinary for his generation, a man who believed at age 18 when we met, and who believes today, that a woman’s work, whether at home or on the job, is as important as a man’s.”
