What does modern day female empowerment really mean in Singapore?

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What does modern day female empowerment really mean in Singapore?

Even in a modern order like Singapore, practice women really savor enough freedom of choice, access to equal opportunities and the correct to cocky-determination?

13 May 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 11 Aug 2022 12:00PM)

Before this year, Government minister for Social and Family Evolution Masagos Zulkifli declared 2022 as the Twelvemonth of Jubilant SG Women, saying: "We will gloat our women's multi-faceted roles across society, and we will as well celebrate the men who help to debunk stereotypes, modify mindsets and play an active role in supporting and uplifting women".

The Singapore authorities is also in the midst of conducting a review of issues affecting women, and will release a White Paper in the second half of 2022 containing recommendations for the continued progress of women in Singapore.

This all sounds very well and skilful, but seems to hint that despite living in such a modern, wired city, nosotros're still very much a traditional, patriarchal society that needs to make concerted efforts to work towards gender equality and female empowerment.

DEFINING Female EMPOWERMENT

So what does female empowerment mean anyway?

Co-ordinate to the European Institute for Gender Equality, it's "the procedure by which women proceeds power and control over their own lives and learn the ability to make strategic choices".

Its five components include: "Women's sense of self-worth; their right to have and to determine choices; their correct to take access to opportunities and resources; their right to have power to command their ain lives, both inside and outside the home; and their power to influence the direction of social alter to create a more simply social and economic order, nationally and internationally."

"In this context," it continues, "education, grooming, sensation raising, building cocky-confidence, expansion of choices, increased access to and control over resources, and deportment to transform the structures and institutions that reinforce and perpetuate gender discrimination and inequality are important tools for empowering women and girls to claim their rights."

The distressing reality is that even in Singapore, which offers equal admission to education, and which sees a high charge per unit of female person participation in the labour force, many women here may not bask that much liberty and equality.

There are even so drinking glass ceilings, a gender wage gap, old boys' clubs, expectations to conform to traditional gender roles, a lack of representation at the C-suite level then on, at play.

A 2022 Credit Suisse report found that women occupy but 15 per cent of CEO positions in Singapore (admittedly, in the yard scheme of things, it's the highest in the region).

The Earth Economic Forum (WEF) ranked Singapore at 54th place on its 2022 Global Gender Gap Index, trailing behind other emerging Association of southeast asian nations states similar Lao people's democratic republic (43rd) and the Philippines (16th).

Recruitment firm Randstad besides cited a Ministry of Manpower written report in January 2022 underscoring the gender pay gap in Singapore, with unadjusted pay gap at sixteen.3 per cent in 2018, and the adjusted pay gap at 6 per cent.

SHAPED BY A PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY

And, how tin a adult female be really sure that the choices she makes are actually her ain, when her perceptions and attitudes are largely shaped by growing upwards within a patriarchal social club?

For case, if a woman chooses to undergo a nose job or breast implants, and pays for the procedures with her own hard-earned money, is that really done from a position of gratuitous will and self-conclusion, or is it an attempt, conscious or not, to adjust to societally-determined standards of "what women should look like"?

All those would-be influencers trying to attract as many followers as possible for their public social media accounts by posting sexy or revealing pictures of themselves. Are they savvy immature entrepreneurs, or have they gotten ensnared in a system that demands they all wait, dress and pose a sure way to capture and hold the male gaze?

How much selection does a working mum actually take, when her kids are raised past hired assist (which, by the way, transfers the work to a woman who'southward paid a whole lot less), her husband needs her to piece of work because they demand the additional income to get by, and she still has to perform a second shift of emotional labour by taking leave to, say, nourish PTA meetings or accept the kids to the medico, or when the responsibility of chores such as buying presents for relatives' birthdays and sussing out the perfect tuition/pianoforte teacher falls on her?

If she doesn't accept a live-in maid, she also performs the tertiary shift – cooking and household chores – likewise. Global estimates show that women assume responsibleness for effectually 3-quarters of all unpaid domestic and community labour.

How like shooting fish in a barrel is it for single mums to exercise their reproductive rights here, when they wish to have kids without getting married, or for divorced mums to survive, when public housing policies tend to favour an intact family unit, and private housing is so expensive?

There'southward also the issue of strange spouses having to rely on their local husbands to renew their dependents' passes. When the marriage turns sour, the strange spouses usually have no choice merely to go out the country, and their children, behind.

That pervy forums such as Sammyboy and SG Nasi Lemak have been effectually for then long, and police cases involving Peeping Toms, male underwear thieves, upskirt video takers, are and then common, really says something near the objectification of, and disrespect, of women.

Indeed, the frequently-used mitigation plea for sexual practice-related crimes committed by male person university students, that they have stellar academic qualifications or potential, can atomic number 82 someone to retrieve that it'due south more important for a man not to have his life ruined, than to exist taken to task for acts of physical/sexual violence towards women.

Thankfully, Minister of Law K Shanmugam has since stated that "in that location can in general exist no excuses for these offences", and increased the maximum jail terms likewise.

THE CHALLENGES AHEAD

According to UN.org, "many challenges remain" in the push button for gender equality and women's rights. "Discriminatory laws and social norms remain pervasive, women proceed to be underrepresented at all levels of political leadership, and one in 5 women and girls between the ages of fifteen and 49 report experiencing concrete or sexual violence past an intimate partner within a 12-month period."

"The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic could contrary the express progress that has been made on gender equality and women's rights. The coronavirus outbreak exacerbates existing inequalities for women and girls across every sphere – from wellness and the economy, to security and social protection.

"Women play a disproportionate office in responding to the virus, including as frontline healthcare workers and carers at home. Women'due south unpaid intendance work has increased significantly every bit a result of school closures and the increased needs of older people. Women are too harder hit past the economic impacts of COVID-nineteen, as they disproportionately work in insecure labour markets. Nearly 60 per cent of women piece of work in the breezy economy, which puts them at greater risk of falling into poverty.

"The pandemic has also led to a steep increase in violence against women and girls. With lockdown measures in place, many women are trapped at home with their abusers, struggling to admission services that are suffering from cuts and restrictions."

Indeed, incidences of family violence here accept increased past 22 per cent since the circuit breaker, such that more government resources are being dedicated to tackling the issue.

Recently in February, two women were stabbed to death in Singapore by men they knew (ane of them, a husband), within days of each other. And merely days ago, on May half dozen, a man was charged with causing grievous hurt to his teenaged sis by hitting her with a wooden pole. She died.

In the cease, while celebrating women is all well and good, we ultimately need to accept it a step further.

Judging from the sex crimes, domestic violence, gender wage gap and inequity in the segmentation of household labour we're still seeing and then much of, at that place'due south still a long way to go.

We should, collectively equally a club, make certain we're raising current and future generations of boys andgirls, who will grow upward to respect, protect and back up women in tackling that longstanding list of issues. And that's something really worth celebrating, isn't information technology?

What does modern day female empowerment really mean in Singapore?

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