For this year’s International Women’s Day, we have a lot of groundbreaking achievements by women around the world to celebrate. Kamala Harris made history by becoming the first black, first South Asian American and first woman to be elected Vice President of the United States. Kim Ng became the first woman and first female Asian-American general manager in Major League Baseball’s 151-year history, and the first woman named to a general manager position by any professional men’s sports team in the North American leagues. Estonia not only got its first female Prime Minister, now both its Prime Minister and President are women. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the first African and first woman ever to be the director general of the World Trade Organization. And joining the list of groundbreaking women is Chloe Zhao, the first Asian woman and the second-ever woman to win best director at the Golden Globes, almost four decades after Barbra Streisand’s win in 1983.
We also got to celebrate some sweet justice this year, when Seiko Hashimoto came the new head of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Organizing Committee after her predecessor, Yoshiro Mori, resigned for making derogatory remarks about women. A former Japanese Prime Minister, Mori told the Japanese Olympic Committee that meetings attended by too many women tended to “drag on” because they “talked too much”, adding, “I heard someone say that if we are to increase the number of female board members, we have to regulate speaking time to some extent, or else we’ll never be able to finish.”
Mori is the one who talked too much. Given that Japan ranks among the lowest in the world when it comes to female political empowerment, Hashimoto heading its Olympics organizing committee is a big development, and was a long time coming.
In today’s coronavirus-ravaged world, we also need to recognize the many women superheroes who have been on the front lines of our fight against the pandemic, including the health care workers who are predominantly women. And women have had domestic responsibilities and other work to deal with from home, compounded by the impact of school closures.
Women are disproportionately negatively affected by the disruptions brought on by the pandemic. Even before the pandemic, women were spending on average three times as many hours on unpaid domestic and caring work – labor that is undervalued – than men. One can only imagine the added burden on women during the pandemic. While we celebrate and recognize women’s contributions, we do them a disservice if we do not recognize that we have not done right by them for a long time.
We are now faced with the very real possibility that the progress we have made in gender equality in recent decades will be reversed. UN Women has found that as part of the pandemic fallout, 47 million more women and girls will be pushed below the poverty line.
UN Women executive director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka explained that “multiple inequalities” made women more at risk. “Women take most of the responsibility for caring for the family; they earn less, save less, and hold much less secure jobs.”
In Hong Kong, we have been struggling with “persistent concerns” over inadequate policy support to local working mothers. A research brief put out by the Legislative Council in 2019 revisited these issues. We know that incentivizing mothers to re-enter the workforce has tremendous economic benefits but barriers stubbornly remain. The shortage of childcare services have forced mothers out of the workforce. Study after study tells us that the lack of family-friendly workplaces compounded with discriminatory attitude towards mothers remain culprits.
The pandemic has forced us to work in different formats. Are we willing to change for good, to provide the flexibility needed to not shut women out of opportunities? Are we willing to truly look at how miserably inadequate our childcare services are and how public policies have failed our mothers and children?
Patting women on their backs for some incredible feats just doesn’t cut it. We have to do better if we are serious about recognizing their contributions. We need to actively remove barriers. That has been a long time coming indeed.
*The writer is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA.
(SCMP)
March 8, 2021
The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of Aequitas Review.
