By Shailey Hingorani, Head of Advocacy and Research, AWARE

Congratulations: We’ve made it to International Women’s Day 2019. Let’s take a breath, pat ourselves on the back, put our feet up… and bask for a while in joyful appreciation of how far women have come.

After all, in many ways, life is better today than it has ever been for women — particularly in affluent, peaceful Singapore. For many around the world, the country’s name evokes visions of safety and security, of moderation and egalitarianism. No surprise that many Singaporeans believe that the struggle for gender equality is over.

Done looking back at our achievements? Great! Now let’s look ahead at the work we have to do. Because the truth is — as our work at AWARE shows over and over — the lived experiences of women in the nation paint quite a different picture than the rosy one above. As a society, we have a lot more ground to cover before every person is afforded the same rights and opportunities, regardless of gender.

So what are five major potholes that remain in Singapore’s road to gender equality?

1. Mind the gender pay gap

“But gender equality already exists” proponents often point to the fact that women in Singapore have equal access to education and work. Yes, women in Singapore make up almost half of the workforce, but they are also being paid a startling 20 per cent less than men. So labour force participation is not the full story. The gap doesn’t diminish as women climb the career ladder. Surprisingly, only 10 per cent of all corporate directors of SGX-listed firms are women, and they are paid an enormous 43 per cent less than their male counterparts.

2. Caregiving doesn’t count

The traditional family portrait depicts women as the “caregivers” and men as the “primary breadwinners”. Families and labour markets alike continue to function largely based on this assumption. The stereotype does not just affect the different roles each gender plays at home. It also affects women’s ability to participate in the labour force, and the quality, duration and type of jobs they can take up. A study by the International Labour Organization (2018) shows that women in Asia and the Pacific spend 4.1 times more time in unpaid care work than men. In Singapore, 43 per cent of women who are not working listed family responsibilities as the reason they are unable to work. In comparison, only 3.8 per cent of men cited family responsibilities as their main reason for not working.

To make matters worse, women are penalised under Singapore’s CareShield health insurance scheme, which has gender-differentiated premiums. So not only do women bear a disproportionate part of the caregiving burden throughout their lives — when they require care themselves, they often have to pay more for it. This practice is unlawful in the EU, where insurance premiums and benefits cannot be differentiated on the basis of gender.

3. Women do more low-wage work

Occupational segregation is a persistent feature of the labour market in Singapore. Some sectors have become integrated over time but others, like the long-term care sector, are dominated by women. Over 90 per cent of paid care work is done by women, who on average earn a mere $1,350 per month — well below the monthly income of the bottom 10 per cent ($1,927).

One could argue, as many do, that women intentionally choose low-paying jobs. But if this was indeed a problem of individual choice then we wouldn’t see empirical evidence of  occupation-wide wages falling when a large number of women join a hitherto largely male-dominated occupation. A robust study on the gender pay gap — controlled for everything from education to work experience to race — found that in the U.S., after women became designers, occupation-wide wages fell by 34 per cent. So a bigger problem here might be that we see women’s labour as being inherently less worthy than men’s.

Many economists believe occupational segregation to be economically inefficient. It doesn’t allow for movement into occupations where women could perform well, and is also one of the main reasons why the gender pay gap persists.

4. Retirement spreads thinner

The impact of gender inequality does not end once a woman stops working in Singapore. It continues into her retirement savings, too. Since women earn less than men and spend more time outside the labour force (thanks to caregiving), they have less money going into their CPF retirement savings and Medisave accounts. Currently, the CPF savings gender gap between male and female active members is 11 per cent. Given that women outlive men by 7 years, they typically need more, not less, savings.

5. Workplaces remain unfriendly

In 2017, 21 per cent of the 515 cases that AWARE’s Sexual Assault Care Centre (SACC) saw involved sexual violence and harassment at the workplace. Workplace harassment has a significant impact on women’s overall psychological and physical well-being, of course, but also their career progression. Although the Tripartite Advisory on Managing Workplace Harassment advises employers to develop a strong anti-harassment policy, such policies have not been made mandatory.

More worryingly, despite a growing global awareness of the prevalence of sexual harassment, 34 per cent of respondents in a new Ipsos report on gender perceptions (2019) believe that false accusations of sexual harassment are a bigger problem in our society than unreported acts of sexual harassment. In reality, most cases of sexual assault or harassment remain unreported, and in fact according to global data only 2-10 per cent of all rape accusations are proven to be false. SACC, Singapore’s only specialised centre for sexual assault survivors, found that approximately 7 in 10 clients who reached out for help in 2016 did not make police reports.

We fail women who suffer harassment when we allow the false accusation myth to pervade. We fail them when we indulge in cultural habits such as victim-blaming, and neglect to hold perpetrators accountable.

So no, we’re not there yet

Gender equality has come a long way, but it has not come far enough. The gender gap is still unconscionably wide. It will not close until women’s work is recognised as equal work, caregiving is acknowledged as the labour it is, and sexual perpetrators are held accountable for their actions. Let’s use this post as a checklist of things to keep fighting for.