This op-ed was originally published in The Straits Times on April 15 2021. 

A recent survey by the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry had a significant and alarming finding: two in five female respondents have experienced gender discrimination in the workplace compared with one in 10 men.

Although social media responses to the news largely consisted of denials (“Women love to complain”), knee-jerk reinforcements of gender norms (“Women are better housewives so they shouldn’t work anyway”) and general “whataboutery”, that statistic should raise concerns in anyone interested in equality and the health of Singapore’s economy.

Though sexist keyboard warriors would have you believe otherwise, gender discrimination is real. It manifests itself in many ways, such as in lower wages for women than men, unequal representation in management positions and as members of corporate boards, and unequal workplace norms.

On Sunday, the Council for Board Diversity revealed that although Singapore’s statutory boards, companies and Institutions of a Public Character did appoint more women to their boards last year, the increase still fell short of the council’s short-term target – 20 per cent female board membership by the end of that year. Indeed, last year, women made up only 17.6 per cent of the boards of the largest 100 primary-listed companies on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) – a measly 1 percentage point increase from the previous year.

In 2019, Singapore tied with Italy for countries with the highest proportion of female chief executives, but that figure was an embarrassingly low 15 per cent. Since senior leadership roles are a springboard for women to join company boards, we cannot consider the lack of gender parity on boards in isolation from women’s limited ascendancy to top management positions.

Women’s lack of equal representation in leadership is especially disappointing in Singapore, where they are as educated as men. The gender gap in university graduate cohorts has significantly narrowed, with women making up half of the resident population aged 25 years and above with university qualifications. Women enter the labour force in similar numbers, too: Participation rates of men and women aged 25 to 29 in 2019 were nearly identical, at 90.1 per cent and 90 per cent, respectively.

Let’s examine the ways we have allowed gender discrimination to persist.

Why so few women at the top?

In 1986, The Wall Street Journal’s Carol Hymowitz and Timothy Schellhardt introduced a metaphor – the glass ceiling – to explain the pronounced lack of women in top management and leadership positions. “Even those few women who rose steadily through the ranks,” they wrote, “eventually crashed into an invisible barrier.”

However, a glass ceiling suggests a singular barrier that women will inevitably hit when they try to ascend to influential leadership roles. But the image flattens out the complex and varied challenges women face throughout their careers – not only when they try to make the leap to senior management or leadership positions.

Women and men tend to be clustered in different occupations. Employers often perceive certain jobs as more suitable for one sex than the other. Women are thus frequently found in occupations that are seen as an extension of their so-called “natural” reproductive, nurturing roles. Indeed, according to the Ministry of Manpower’s 2020 paper on the gender gap, the distribution of full-time resident employees aged 25 to 54 shows that women have largely remained in “traditionally female occupations”: nursing, teaching, administration and so on.

Management functions tend to be gender-segregated too. According to an International Labour Organisation (ILO) report on overcoming gender segregation in management occupations and business in Asia and the Pacific, women are usually clustered in areas such as human resources, financial administration, corporate social responsibility and public relations.

As a result, women find it difficult to gather the kind of diverse and broad experiences that are often preconditions for top management positions and, subsequently, for boards.

There’s also research to show that women’s careers typically halt at the middle management level. Consider findings of a 2015 ILO report which found that, although women make up half of middle management globally, only 5 per cent of the CEO positions of publicly listed Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development companies belong to women.

Their careers are being stalled because of unrealistic demands on their time: ILO estimates that women in the Asia-Pacific spend 4.1 times more time on unpaid care and household chores than men.

How could those responsibilities not hold women back from management roles requiring long hours on weeknights and weekends?

Why are board positions not diverse enough?

First, board recruitment often relies on personal networks. Eighty-nine per cent of the 780 SGX-listed companies surveyed by the Ministry of Social and Family Development in 2014 reportedly utilised personal networks for board recruitment, with 42 per cent using this as their sole recruitment tool. For many reasons, women often do not have access to male networks.

Second, group member demographics play an influential role in how new members are selected. People who are similar to one another feel more comfortable and satisfied working together. So what a 2018 BoardAgender report suggests is hardly surprising: Current composition frequently dictates future composition of boards.

Third, we continue to implicitly associate leadership with men and masculinity. Many employers still associate the qualities required to be a good manager, such as assertiveness, independence and a willingness to take risks, with inherent maleness. A 2016 survey by recruitment firm Randstad found that 76 per cent of Singapore employees prefer a male boss.

Finally, boards are not renewed frequently enough. In 2016, the average directorship tenure in Singapore (9.4 years for male directors and 7.4 years for female directors) was significantly longer than that in the region (3.1 to 8.7 years and 2.4 to 5.8 years for men and women, respectively). These figures suggest that boards in Singapore are relatively entrenched. As a result, aspiring female directors have fewer opportunities to be appointed.

Benefits of a gender-diverse organisation

There’s plenty of research to suggest that an increase in female board representation and company leadership improves decision-making. Benefits include the availability of more diverse perspectives, more ethical governance behaviour and increased access to resources and expertise. Gender diversity is positively associated with the company’s business performance.

Despite this, gender equality in leadership and board positions is unlikely to happen on its own.

Deloitte’s Women in the Boardroom report catalogues the diverse approaches countries have taken to ensure greater board diversity: Some countries have relied on gender quotas, whereas others – such as Australia, New Zealand and Britain – have promoted gender diversity through target setting and corporate governance recommendations. Singapore’s approach is more closely aligned with the latter. Yet, as the Council for Board Diversity’s update shows, our measures are falling short of even modest expectations.

To really improve in this area, we need to take a more ambitious and expansive tack.

We have to focus our efforts at earlier points in women’s career trajectories. We need to build workplaces that recognise the roles that employees play outside of work, and support them in dispensing those responsibilities.

Employers can do this, for example, by providing flexible work arrangements and paid caregiving leave, and by giving women more opportunities to manage high-value assignments, which research suggests is a good predictor of success later in their careers.

The success of Singapore women means the success of Singapore businesses. So more effort should go into creating the sort of environment that allows women to thrive across their entire careers.

Shailey Hingorani,  Head of Research and Advocacy, AWARE