Letters | How companies can ensure gender bias doesn’t hold women back

On International Women’s Day, readers discuss the need to better support women as they move up the career ladder, migrant domestic workers’ efforts to create a more inclusive city, and the Hong Kong government’s baby bonus

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Office workers in Central, Hong Kong, during lunch hour on November 20, 2023. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 11:30am, 8 Mar 2024

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On International Women’s Day, I am reminded of the column, “As women get richer, they are also changing the face of philanthropy” (January 22, 2022), which pointed out that rather than just providing funding, many female philanthropists are changing the giving landscape and that an “inclusive and collaborative approach enables the co-creation of solutions between givers, receivers and stakeholders”. This is a more “human-centred” way of giving, which pays greater attention to “identifying the promise of an organisation and empowering its leadership to find ways to address challenges”. Sounds good.

Women have many strengths and talents which are not fully tapped into. Overcoming gender bias in the workplace should be a goal for every company.

According to the Women in the Workplace 2023 report by McKinsey & Company and Leanin.Org on women in corporate America and Canada, women are more ambitious today than before the pandemic. Women and men at the director level are equally interested in C-suite roles. Young women are especially ambitious: nine in 10 women under the age of 30 want to be promoted to the next level, and three in four aspire to become senior leaders.

I believe the trend is similar here in Hong Kong and in mainland China. But how can we give more reasonable support to female employees and treat brilliant women fairly when it comes to career advancement?

The answer is twofold. At the upper level, company leaders should recognise this issue and put in place appropriate policies and measures to ensure the company treats women equally in recruitment and advancement.