Welcome focus on Hong Kong women's uphill struggles
Su-Mei Thompson welcomes government moves to create a more level playing field for women in society, including those unveiled in the policy address - but will they prove to be effective?
The recent policy address touches on many issues that local women's groups have been working to address. These include turning a gender lens on policymaking, helping women carers stay in the workforce and empowering women in poverty to be more economically self-reliant. We now need detailed and thoughtful implementation of the outlined approaches.
From this year, all government departments are required to refer to a "gender mainstreaming checklist" when formulating major policies and initiatives. Basically, they will have to confirm that they have examined gender-segregated data and have consulted women's associations on the likely gender impact.
However, we know from our own research that there are significant gaps across the government in the collection and analysis of key data - including on teenage pregnancies, household spending on childcare and elderly care, individuals with disabilities, and ethnic minority women - which make it more difficult for effective policies to be developed.
In addition, gender experts must be utilised, to allay the suspicion that departments will merely pay lip service to the checklist. Here, we need to build the talent pool of officials who understand gender issues and can join the dots between data and policy formulation to create a more level playing field for women.
The policy address also proposed to increase women's representation on advisory and statutory bodies from 30 per cent to 35 per cent. However, a closer look at the make-up of these groups reveals that while, overall, women comprise more than 30 per cent of the total, some 147 of the 470 bodies have fewer than 30 per cent women and 30 boards have no women at all. More must be done to encourage the laggards.
Furthermore, the positive impact of women's involvement would be even bigger if the government committed to setting targets to address the shockingly low representation of women in functional constituencies - they hold just two of the 35 seats - and in the Legislative Council more generally, where women make up just 16 per cent of lawmakers.
