At a conference on gender equality earlier this month, Raymond Tang Yee-bong, the chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission, asked whether women today were indeed better off than their mothers and grandmothers.
'Women may be better educated than their mothers ... [and have] more choices,' he said. 'But many now carry dual roles as carers and income earners?'
While women today generally have more control over their lives than in previous generations, employers and society at large have yet to come to terms with what it means to accommodate women who work outside the home. This is despite the fact that 52 per cent of women in Hong Kong are in the workforce, alongside 71 per cent of men.
The results of a survey conducted by the Women's Commission are telling. These show that younger women, more educated women, higher income women and women who have not been married reported higher satisfaction with their lives than their counterparts.
Fanny Cheung Mui-ching of the Gender Research Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong said the lack of childcare facilities in Hong Kong meant women with less education or from lower income families, who could not afford domestic helpers, were unduly burdened with both bringing in wages and care-giving. Add to that the latest police statistics on domestic violence and disputes - reports of which rose last year by 79 per cent over 2005 - and a rather dire picture is painted for working women with families. And yet, in successive surveys, women rate their families as the most important part of their lives.
The gender equality conference brought together experts in the field from Sweden, widely regarded as one of the most progressive countries in the world, to share their views on policy initiatives they say have helped the nation to get there.
From a time when women could get an education only in convents and had no legal rights of guardianship over their own children, women now hold 47 per cent of the seats in Sweden's parliament. Forty-one per cent of government ministers are female. Women serve as priests and bishops in the Church of Sweden and as military officers.
