When women's interests are a concern for us all
Alice Wu says women aren't the reason for our woes and protecting their interests is the smart way to improve prospects for all in Hong Kong
Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah announced in last week's budget that he will allocate HK$130 million to strengthen childcare services to provide better support for women to achieve a work-family balance. It definitely seems like a good thing: looking after women's interests.
Things seem on the up and up for women these days, at least judging by the rhetoric. At the Oscars, Patricia Arquette used her speech to call for equal pay for women. Hillary Clinton criticised the gender gap in a Silicon Valley speech. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, meanwhile, has been talking a whole lot about "womenomics" in one of the most sexist places in the developed world. Everyone seems to be telling women to go ahead and "lean in".
It's great that we're having these conversations. And it's good that the world is slowly catching on to the fact that women make up half the world, and that expanding economic opportunities for them is a smart way to improve long-term growth prospects.
Granted, I would have preferred Tsang to have been more forceful in his pledge to "encourage employers to introduce more flexible working arrangements… [that] they would allow employees to work from home, or offer part-time and job sharing alternatives, to enable more people with family commitments to join the workforce", and to be backed up by actual policy initiatives and dollar signs. But I do understand that saying the right things is a lot easier than fighting the stubborn and outdated social norms and notions that miscast women.
Women have more access to education, are more financially independent, can better pursue their careers of choice, and are in better positions to make life decisions. But, yet, we are still fighting outrageously outdated notions that associate working women with rising divorce rates. When will we stop blaming women for our failures?
We blame women for failed marriages. We blame women for lowering wages. And, if all that isn't enough, we can always call them names. Hong Kong's single ladies have been stigmatised as "leftover women" ( ). All the effort that has gone into creating opportunities for women will be for nothing if we go backwards by continuing to subject them to all sorts of abuse.
This is the conversation we need to have before we can talk about getting more women into the labour force. If we are serious about helping women achieve a work-life balance, we must stop seeing childcare as a women-only issue. Yes, inadequate childcare has kept women away from work, but women aren't the only ones who need childcare. When people - men or women - have to work long hours and are forced to be absentee parents, it isn't just an issue of childcare. The fact that mothers need to settle for less when it comes to job prospects after giving birth isn't just a women's issue.
Our outdated mindset is what is keeping women from the workforce. We need to stop telling women to try harder, to shoulder more responsibilities, and to take the blame. We must stop thinking of women as the cause of our problems, and the challenges women face solely as women's problems.
