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SCMP Reporter

BENDING OVER BACKWARDS

As press briefing invites go, this is one of the more bizarre we have received lately:

'Sunday is going to launch a new target market segment on 6th May 2004 (Thursday). You or your representative is cordially invited to a press briefing hosted by Mr Bruce Hicks, Group Managing Director of Sunday Communications Ltd.'

So far so good. But then we read:

'You are also welcome to join the yoga and spinning lessons following by [sic] the press briefing. Sports wear and shower facilities will be available for your convenience during the day.'

Thanks, but no thanks.

WOMEN'S PLACE IN SOCIETY

Singapore's eternal senior minister, Lee Kuan Yew, was in Beijing late last month, where he ruminated on sexual equality and its consequences:

'[In Singapore] women are  as well educated and earning as much as men. This has altered the husband-wife relationship, and affected the nature of our society. The result has been higher divorce rates, more single-generation families, fewer children in each family and fewer three-generation households. The younger generation is less patriarchal ...

'The Japanese tried to block this trend of equality to the sexes ... but by the 1990s, they faced similar problems. Japanese women are getting married much later, many choose to remain single, there are more divorces, fewer children, low fertility rates, many [horror] marry foreigners ...

'I used to hold myself responsible for having caused this phenomenon of many unmarried women graduates by opening up equal education and top job opportunities to all women from the 1960s. I now believe I only hastened it by some 20 years.'



Lai See