Republic trails neighbours in workplace gender diversity: Report

SINGAPORE — The Republic lags behind several of its regional neighbours in terms of gender diversity across all levels in the workplace, showed a Bank of America Merrill Lynch-sponsored report released yesterday.

Singapore ranked fourth behind Malaysia, China and Hong Kong, said the report, which looked at gender diversity trends across more than 30 multinational firms in six markets.

The new report conducted by non-profit organisation Community Business echoes other findings on the same subject. A report jointly released by BoardAgender and National University of Singapore in April showed that the Republic trailed many of its regional peers in terms of women representation on the boards of companies.

Community Business’ Gender Diversity Benchmark for Asia 2014 report showed women made up an average of 48.2 per cent of the total workforce in Singapore, compared with Malaysia at 58.1 per cent, China at 56.7 per cent and Hong Kong at 50.9 per cent.

At the junior level, women comprised an average of 58.5 per cent of the workforce here, but this representation fell to 40.6 per cent and 23.7 per cent at the middle and senior levels, respectively. Malaysia fared better across the three levels, with senior-level women making up 34 per cent of the workforce.

“Despite the less favourable environment for women’s advancement in Malaysia, the country performs well on all data points. These findings show that the existence of policies and programmes does not necessarily correlate to strong performance, and bringing about change requires multifaceted efforts from different sectors and on different aspects,” said Mrs Fern Ngai, chief executive of Community Business. She added that more needs to be done across the region to improve gender diversity in the workplace such as in the area of under-representation at the senior levels.

The Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) told TODAY that the study’s findings paint a disturbing picture about the state of gender diversity in Singapore.

Citing the Morgan McKinley survey released earlier this week that said Singaporean workers feel obligated to work longer hours despite not being productive, Ms Jolene Tan, AWARE’s programmes and communications senior manager, said: “If that’s the culture that we face and because women are still taking on more of the caregiving responsibilities at home, it’s going to impact their ability to participate and advance in the economic arena.

“Unfortunately, there are also people who still have the attitude that women are not as capable as men, so that’s also a barrier.”

As such, more needs to be done to maximise the potential of women in the workplace, she added.

However, the report did highlight that Singapore has done well in promoting women-friendly and pro-family policies that can enable the advancement of women in the workplace. Compared with the average regional scores, the country scored well in the areas of paid maternity leave, paternity leave and flexible work arrangements. Lee Yen Nee