Women carry even heavier burden
- International Women’s Day is time to reflect on how the pandemic has placed greater responsibility on their shoulders both at work and home, and the Hong Kong measures that have made some lives a little easier
Even in fully liberated societies, International Women’s Day remains an occasion for a kind of stocktake on women’s progress towards equality of representation with men in leadership positions, commensurate with their ability and qualifications.
The numbers show it remains slow.
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Currently, only 8.2 per cent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. Around 14 per cent of board positions of companies listed in Hong Kong are held by women. Only 20 per cent of director-level positions in the city’s finance industry are held by women.
McKinsey Global Institute says economic parity between men and women could add as much as US$28 trillion, or 26 per cent, to annual global gross domestic product.
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International Women's Day puts spotlight on female health care workers fighting Covid-19
International Women’s Day spans a whole range of women’s issues across societies from rich to poor. But this year one issue is common to them all. While everyone is affected by Covid-19, women generally bear a greater burden.
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According to a study by the University of Hong Kong medical school published in the British medical journal The Lancet, prevention measures have caused disruption at work, school and home. There are several reasons, including that women are the primary child carers.
Now that schools in most parts of the world have been closed at times, many mothers, whether working or not, have had to juggle increasingly demanding roles, especially when business closures and retrenchments of mums and dads have exacerbated the burden on families.
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Head of World Trade Organization and former Australian Prime Minister discuss women and leadership
If there is any doubt which gender shoulders the greater burden of the pandemic, women are also over-represented in frontline and other nursing jobs.
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That said, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor deserves credit for progress on initiatives she promised in 2018, with statutory maternity leave increased from 10 to 14 weeks at the government’s cost, participation by women in government advisory committees very near the target of 35 per cent, and breast-feeding rooms in government facilities and mandatory in new shopping centres.
Hopefully, when International Women’s Day comes around again, vaccination will have given us all herd immunity. But that will not make the day any less relevant to the causes of equality and justice for women.
