Who runs Hong Kong? Not women. In government, politics, and especially business, the corridors of power are dominated by men.
Men hold 82 per cent of the seats in the Legislative Council. They make up 83 per cent of the judges in the Court of Final Appeal, High Court and District Court combined. There is not a single woman on the Court of Final Appeal, the city's highest court. Sixty-eight per cent of the top-ranked civil servants, including permanent secretaries and officials of grade 6 rank or above, are men.
Yet the gender gap is even wider in the boardroom. While women make up nearly half of the labour force, men fill 90 per cent of seats on the boards of the largest and most important listed companies, according to a South China Morning Post analysis of the city's 50 largest listed companies and the Hang Seng Index.
'If you are a society where 50 per cent of your resources are not being fully employed and utilised to the full, then of course everything suffers,' said Sophia Kao Ching-chi, chairwoman of the Women's Commission, a government advisory body.
'It is important for businesses to realise that if they want to compete, they need to have more talent ... Women are an untapped pool of talent and resources.'
Hong Kong's business leadership lags behind developed countries in the West in sexual equality, but is ahead of its neighbours in Asia.
Women hold only 9.2 per cent of directorships in Hang Seng Index-listed companies, according to the Post analysis of corporate board memberships.