Soon, other activists also announced their wish lists. Those ran the gamut from fixing the gender pay gap and ageism towards to women, to having more women on boards, legislating against gender discrimination, improving sex education, promoting gender-neutral language and even requiring women to do national service like the men (who must do two years).

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Wong, who is also an adviser at the S.R. Nathan School of Human Development at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, said inequality in Singapore was mostly behind closed doors.

“It’s in more personal and private spheres, in the home, in your relationship with your husband, with your relatives and so on, that traditional norms, values and expectations still exist,” she said.

Wong Jia Yun is the chairperson of Young Women’s Leadership Connection (YWLC), a community organisation under the network of statutory board People’s Association. She said there were certain cultural values that shaped society’s expectations of women in Asian societies.

Wong, a regional business development manager at Visa, asked: “Why do words like ‘ambition’ and ‘aggressiveness’ take on unnecessarily negative connotations for women in certain contexts?”

ONE MAN’S VIEW

This review was announced by K Shanmugam, a cabinet minister wearing the dual hats of Home Affairs and Law. He has fronted the implementation of controversial policies including a fake news law but is also a known advocate for animal welfare and women’s rights. Last year, he moved amendments to the Penal Code to remove marital immunity for rape and to the Protection from Harassment Act to ensure intimate but unmarried partners could also get protection orders. He also often weighs in on pet adoption issues.

Having Shanmugam announce the review and spell out the philosophy behind it, said Aware president Margaret Thomas, meant “you’re laying the foundation for all the little changes that are needed in government policy”.

“Over the years, he has been hawkish in some areas but on women’s issues, he is wonderfully supportive,” she said.

The minister told This Week in Asia he wanted to look beyond the matrices of women’s access to education, health care, legal protection, or how well they do in jobs. “I wanted to go further and say, if we start in schools, it would become something deeply ingrained in the mindset of young boys and girls, right from a very early age, that this is one of the fundamentals like filial piety – there are number of things that you accept as basic,” he said.

“It is only right. Women form half the population, they have as much right as anybody else and that has to be recognised in a significant way. It’s basic, but it’s just the right thing to do.”

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The minister said it was a string of voyeurism cases that had got him thinking about how the problem could be fixed beyond stiffening penalties. “I felt that we can go further and not just look at increasing penalties, but can we intervene to change mindsets? That means intervening when they‘re three, four, or five years old, preschool, primary school, so that they understand.”

The minister was referring to a spate of offences against women that outraged the Singapore public recently, as the sentences the male perpetrators received were seen as too lenient.

Last year, National University of Singapore (NUS) student Monica Baey became a household name when she sparked a national debate on sexual harassment. She had been filmed in the shower by fellow student Nicholas Lim, and felt he got away too lightly when he received a conditional warning from the police and a one semester suspension from the university. She aired her frustrations on Instagram Stories to draw attention to how NUS handled cases of sexual misconduct.

In July, news that dentistry student Yin Zi Qin – who broke into his ex-girlfriend’s house and tried to strangle her and pressed his thumb against her eye – was handed community-based sentences and a school suspension sparked public outrage. The judge had thought Yin was not at high risk of reoffending and cited his youth, rehabilitative prospects and lack of previous convictions as reasons for community based-sentences rather than a jail term.

The dentistry student case drew a rare press release from the PAP’s Women’s Wing, who said they were “dismayed that the sentence appears disproportionate to the offence” and that they had taken their concerns to Shanmugam.

Said Shanmugam: “There is a fundamental problem, the solution must be a fundamental change in psyche.”

He said this could be done through the education system, though he declined to go into specifics, saying he was not an education expert and that it would tie the hands of the committee of three female lawmakers – Minister of State Low Yen Ling and Sun Xueling and Parliamentary Secretary Rahayu Mahzam – tasked with the review.

Their review will incorporate public feedback and culminate in a white paper of recommendations to Parliament, that will serve as a road map for progress towards a gender equal Singapore.

“You start working backwards from the principle that has been set and say how are we going to achieve it, what is necessary? I think certainly the way schools operate would be a part, I would assume of the solution,” he said.

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“How you interact with girls, how you interact with boys, what you tell them about their possibilities, how boys should treat girls – those are all things that society as a whole has to impart. It also starts with the family, don‘t underestimate the family responsibility.”

What Shanmugam would say was that the committee could look at the representation of women on corporate boards and listed companies – the top 100 companies listed on the Singapore Exchange had women forming 7.5 per cent of boards in 2013, then 16.2 per cent last year – and how to help balance the caregiving duties at home.

In comparison, a Reuters poll found that about one-fifth of Japanese companies had no women managers and at most women accounted for less than 10 per cent of management.

WHY NOW?

Women canvassed by This Week in Asia questioned the timing of the review even as they praised it. Michelle Ho, assistant professor of feminist and queer cultural studies at NUS, said “many non-profit and non-governmental organisations like Aware” had long called for more attention on gender issues but the review was being led by the government and was not in collaboration with these organisations.

After Baey’s case came to light, students who felt there was a glaring lack of support for victims of sexual misconduct started a group called Students for a Safer NUS. It has since grown to 40 students and has helped the university’s newly launched victim care unit with their survey on sexual misconduct and safety on campus.

The student community also provides support to students through a hotline and use their social media platforms to educate students on sexual misconduct and violence.

But Thomas said she chose to hope that “the review and the white paper will be the definitive step forward that we’ve been waiting for decades”.

Added Constance Singam, who joined Aware in 1986 and served as its president for three terms: “It is always good that people are looking at these issues which have plagued us, not just as women, but as society for so long.”

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Singam, like other women This Week in Asia spoke to, cited the improvements in women’s rights that Singapore had made through the decades. All mentioned the Women’s Charter, that was passed in 1961 and made men and women equal in marriages and banned polygamy for non-Muslims. Thomas called it “progressive” and sociologist Aline Wong said it was not like things stalled after the Women’s Charter. Singam added she was grateful for the opportunity for education and employment.

Wong said many unequal measures had been “righted” over the past few decades. She cited how the government had removed the one-third quota on women in medical schools – although this quota was announced by the government in 1979, when as Thomas pointed out there was an all-men parliament with no woman to argue against it – allowed the overseas-born children of Singaporean women to get citizenship, and removed barriers to women’s participation in the labour force.

“It is not true when people say, ‘Finally’, or ‘At last’. All these decades we’ve been talking and doing,” said Wong, adding that since the 1990s when she was at the education ministry, she had asked officers to make sure school textbooks did not depict stereotypes of male and female occupations.

Copywriter Michael Cheng, 40, said he had only positive feelings about a move towards greater gender quality: “Folks in my office are very dear to me. If the review leads to changes that leaves the women better off, that works for me.”

One question that has emerged is whether there are political undertones to the review, with the ruling party seeking to showcase that its politicians can cater to a growing desire for diverse views in parliament.

While the PAP has consistently fielded women – 25 out of 93 candidates were female this year – women from the opposition had captured the public’s attention in the run-up to the polls, including the Workers’ Party’s He Ting Ru, a lawyer, and Raeesah Khan, an activist. Both women, who have young children, ended up entering Parliament after winning seats in Sengkang, a constituency dominated by young families. A survey of more than 4,000 citizens above the age of 21 by the think tank Institute of Policy Studies after the election found the WP’s credibility among women of voting age had improved since the 2015 election.

Asked if politics was a motivating factor behind the review, Wong said: “You may not be wrong, but it is not very much a factor.”

She said the Women’s Wing always campaigned for change internally, not publicly, and thought its July statement was more in reaction to the series of cases than responding to political pressure.

But in reference to voters’ inclination for more political diversity in Parliament, leading to a record-high opposition presence this time round, Wong said: “Maybe within the next five years, the government must be seen to be more responsive to people’s demands and have diversity in representation, and go into various issues that previously were not so prominent.”

GENERATIONAL CHANGE

Shanmugam told This Week in Asia his aim was to “re-tune society as a whole from a young age” and he thought the results would take at least a generation to show.

But given that this inculcation of the fundamental value could take one to two generations, what happens in the meantime? For YWLC’s Wong, it comes down to a regular review of policy. “Till such values can be embedded consistently in everyone’s consciousness, there will still need to be a set of laws and policies – reviewed regularly – in place to cover that which is not covered by ‘good values’,” she said.

What was crucial for the review to work, said Aware and YWLC, was to take into account diverse voices. Aware listed “more marginalised groups, like transnational spouses, women from religious and ethnic minorities, women with disabilities, domestic workers and sex workers”.

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YWLC’s Wong wanted the voices of minority women also to be represented. She said: “While women as a whole now have more platforms to champion gender equality and address other women’s issues, accessibility is not evenly spread out within the women population.”

Men, too, must be co-opted into this conversation. YWLC’s Wong said men must become allies at the workplace. “In some industries, for instance, being a man affords certain advantages intentionally or not, and it is important that men in these situations are aware of this privilege and do what they can to uplift others within reasonable boundaries.”

Women’s voices alone would not go far if the aim was to change social attitudes, added Aline Wong.

Shanmugam said the government would consult and take in a variety of viewpoints, but cautioned that not every request would be viable. “Both because of the nature of our country and the nature of our economy and the nature of our society, some things will be doable and some things will not be doable. And you then have to explain why we think certain things are not doable. It’s always a cost-benefit analysis, I don’t mean in money terms, but what is doable and not doable.”

03:04

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While the representation of women on listed companies’ boards is at only 16.2 per cent – because “it was always a boys‘ club”, said Trina Liang Lin, the past president of UN Women Singapore and Financial Women’s Association – Liang Lin and Aline Wong said women in Singapore were doing well professionally compared to Asian counterparts who may have more women on boards.

Liang Lin and Wong said the women on boards in other Asian countries tended to be there because they were members of the family owning the company, but in Singapore they tended to be senior professionals well known in their fields.

Liang Lin, also the managing director of Templebridge Investments, said she saw many women starting businesses now. “And you’re going to see many more with the dearth of jobs or internships. The low interest rate environment could make entrepreneurship a more viable option,” she said.

Singam, who hoped the review would also cover the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, said parents and teachers must buy in to equality as a value. “It is a revolutionary change in attitude, change in mindset, change in approach by the political leaders and policymakers – it’s a revolutionary way of thinking,” she said.

Stay at home mother-of-four Nur Ain Binte Hamid, 32, for example, said she struggled to get her son, 9, to help out for household chores or the kitchen duties because of perceived gender roles. “He keeps saying, ‘I’m a boy, I don’t have to do these things.’ I tell him, ‘Have you seen chefs who are men? Who says men cannot cook?”

And it is not just men’s attitudes that need to change. Thomas said: “For every Aware-type of person, there are maybe two, three, four, or five women who don’t agree, who are caught up in that kind of patriarchal thinking and contributing to its continuation, who are just not able to see why it is wrong.”

Liang Lin said advocates must reach out to those people who aren’t already proponents of gender equality. “There is already a strong chorus of voices for gender equality in Singapore. I tend to see the same faces at the same events. The issue is to identify and get to the segments of society who have not had a mindset change – not just if they are decision makers.”

If Singapore could pull off this societal transformation where gender equality becomes a fundamental value, Aline Wong said, it would be the first Asian society to do so. Even Chinese communism, which talked about women holding up half the sky, did not manage to get rid of patriarchal attitudes, she said.

Her hope for the review is for it to find a balance between equality and preserving Asian values. “I don’t say that Asian values mean the men must dominate. I think it‘s really a Yin and Yang relationship. You cannot just be equal, but it’s just really complementing, accommodating, finding a balance, finding harmony, so that everything works out without too much conflict.”