Gender bias still widespread in Hong Kong

Many people who live in Hong Kong will tell you that women are a pampered and powerful breed here.

Primetime sitcoms show wives holding the purse-strings of the family. Anson Chan, Rita Fan, and others from the so-called 'handbag brigade' occupy top posts in the Government and are quoted daily in the press. Hong Kong women seem liberated in many ways. But how true is this perception? The Hong Kong Government would say that it is close to accurate, that sex discrimination is not a problem in the workplace. In its initial report of the United Nations' Convention on the Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Government states: 'From the employers' perspective, there appears little economic rationale to deliberately turn away prospective job applicants just for the sake of sex discrimination, as this will only limit their source of manpower supply.

Furthermore, through years of public education and promotion, most employers have now built up the attitude and concept of according the same employment opportunities for both men and women.' The CEDAW was extended to Hong Kong in 1996. Including China, 162 nations have signed on, thereby promising equal opportunities and certain inalienable rights to women. Each state which must submit an initial report to the UN within one year of signing the convention, and every four years thereafter.

The Hong Kong Government's initial report (published in August of this year) outlines some recently enacted ordinances against sex discrimination. However, this report neglects many areas in which gender bias is still pervasive. Statistics for the first half of 1998 show, for example, that men occupy about 70 per cent of all professional, managerial, and high administrative posts. They comprise 67 per cent of the civil service.

Moreover, working class women, new immigrants, and poor housewives are most susceptible to economic instability and social barriers.

Records show, for instance, that 64 per cent of battered women seeking shelter are recent immigrants; 82 per cent of participants in the Employee Retraining Scheme are women, many of whom never managed to acquire the skills needed to make the transition from manufacturing to service-oriented jobs in the 1990s. These women often have inadequate resources to pay for childcare, health services and general education programmes.