Opinion | In leaving women out of her policies, Carrie Lam has made a costly economic mistake

Name: Companies need to foster caring and compassionate workplace culture during the Covid-19 pandemic
Uploaded: 2020-12-06T22:00:13.000Z
Duration: 5 min 21 s
Description: Companies need to foster caring and compassionate workplace culture during the Covid-19 pandemic

From her privileged vantage point, excused from domestic duties, Lam probably has no idea women’s challenges were largely overlooked in her policy address. Yet leaving women behind will do little to help economic recovery

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

People head to work in Central on April 15. More than half the population in Hong Kong is female, yet their needs are often overlooked. Photo: Nora Tam

Alice Wu

Published: 6:00am, 7 Dec 2020Updated: 8:02am, 7 Dec 2020

I am truly happy for Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to be in a position to be able to “devote every minute of my time to work”. After all, it truly is a privilege for anyone – but especially for a woman – to be relieved of the burden of making sure the household is in order, and that its occupants, young and old, have their needs met.

For many, there’s the daily struggle of getting to work on time while trying to hide that you have offspring or elderly parents who might need your care during working hours (which in Hong Kong averages 50.1 hours per week, according to 2016 statistics). But, of course, to admit that would make you “less committed”, ruin your chances of promotion and wreck your career.

Still, here is one woman at least who can concentrate on doing what she feels will save Hong Kong from its darkest days – being ravaged by a year of social upheaval and by Covid-19 – while not having to deal with chores like talking to her husband. So, all power to her, right?

Wrong. Lam’s “all-in” work ethic, with little or no time for her family or personal needs only harms her: studies show that working ourselves into the ground impairs judgment and productivity.

Unfortunately, Lam is also encouraging and reinforcing exactly the sort of gender norms that make family care beneath the capable and committed “ideal” worker. It is thanks to these entrenched norms that women are left to take on most of the domestic responsibilities, with workplaces still largely structured around men, with little, if any, consideration for women’s needs.

05:21

Companies need to foster caring and compassionate workplace culture during the Covid-19 pandemic

So it is no wonder that women were left out of Lam’s latest policy address. Not only did she recycle old policy ideas and sentiments, she continued to put women on mute, perpetuating the practice of making them “invisible women”, to borrow feminist Caroline Criado Perez’s words.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x