Women still battle to break glass ceiling in Hong Kong

Despite Hong Kong's status as an international financial centre offering equal education and career opportunities for women, they still find it difficult to break through the glass ceiling.

In films and advertisements, women are often seen wearing bikinis or beautiful dresses in roles designed to attract the male hero. In reality, many are assigned to supporting roles in the office and can only hope to reach middle management level. Only in a few exceptional cases do they manage to take a seat at the executive boardroom table or make it to the chief executive suite.

Lau Ka-shi, chief executive of BCT Group, recalled how she was the only female trainee among an office packed with men when she started her career at an American bank.

"Affirmative action was prevalent at that time. As a woman and the only Asian on the trainee programme, hiring me helped the bank fulfil both quotas in one go," she said.

At that time, Lau said the more visible and interesting work would be given to her male colleagues, while she was assigned in-house roles such as credit analysis.

"The mind-set of management was that they asked the guys to go and meet clients while as a girl, I was supposed to do the in-house work. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise as credit management is a very important function of the bank," she said.