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More than 200 C-suite women senior executives, including global chief executives and chief financial officers, are gathering in the epicentre of Hong Kong’s financial district for the city’s first ever Women Chief Executives summit today. The conference is symbolic as much as it is significant. Women in this city have progressed by leaps and bounds over the past decade. A recent report by one of the summit’s organisers, the Women Chief Executive Network, as well as KPMG and the Women’s Foundation, found that 45 per cent of senior leadership roles in the city’s banks, asset management firms, insurance companies and fintech firms are held by women, an 11 percentage-point surge from 34 per cent in 2018. And the number of women on the board of directors in Hong Kong’s financial sector has leapt from 21 per cent in 2018 to 37 per cent over the same period. Both men and women in the sector should be very proud of such progress. As an international finance centre, Hong Kong has been playing catch-up to what is a global trend – by July 2019, there were no longer any companies with all-male boards on the S&P 500 Index. In true Hong Kong-style efficiency, the glass ceiling in the city’s finance sector is finally being shattered thanks to the collective efforts of women and men. New policies by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing to promote gender diversity on boards, including a rule banning single-gender boards that took effect on January 1, have helped close the gender gap. Now, fewer than 10 of Hong Kong’s 2,600 listed companies do not have women on their boards. Just three years ago, more than 800 listed firms did not have female directors. Women are finally taking their place at the table. Time will tell whether their representation amounts to window dressing or genuine empowerment. Regardless, the doors to these boardrooms have swung open. We are counting on these women to be catalysts for change and lead a culture of inclusivity within their companies and also beyond the boardroom. These are great milestones to celebrate, especially coming on the heels of the Global’s Leaders Meeting on Women, held in Beijing last month. The summit commemorated another landmark meeting held in the Chinese capital, the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women. That conference produced the blueprint for advancing women’s rights on a global scale, the Beijing Platform for Action. Three decades on, remarkable changes have taken place. In China, the fight against poverty has empowered women and created today’s “she economy”. The fact that the country is looking to women to spur consumer spending is a testament to just how much things have changed. Women undeniably wield immense economic power and are active drivers of growth. However, much more needs to be done to ensure women are empowered as leaders and not only valued as consumers. Eastern Asia and the Pacific still lag behind. For example, just over half of the combined region is ranked in the top 100 of the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, which has benchmarked gender parity since 2006. In the region, only New Zealand featured in the top 10 this year. Hong Kong, in particular, has a long way to go. According to the city’s latest census report released in August, the gender pay gap remains persistent across all occupations. Female managers earn HK$45,900 (US$5,906) a month while their male counterparts earn HK$49,600. In the professional sector, women earn HK$45,000 while men earn HK$50,000. Employing women makes business sense, but it shouldn’t be because they cost less. That’s not valuing women for their contributions. It’s taking advantage of them. The government has talked about unleashing the power of women in the workforce for years. There was a slight increase (0.6 per cent) of women in the workforce from 2023 to 2024. However, the city still has a disproportionate number of economically inactive women. Aside from retirement, the top reason for women not entering the workforce is engagement in household duties, according to the census data. This is why women are not fully empowered yet. Of course, this issue goes beyond Hong Kong. Liu Qian, founder of Wusawa Advisory and formerly managing director of The Economist Group in Greater China, recently told the Post that she considered the burden of domestic work and childcare to be a critical barrier to the career advancement of women in the rest of China too. When we genuinely include women, empower them to lead and make decisions in government that drive real policy changes, armed with different perspectives, then we can finally address our fundamental problems, including an ageing population and low birth rate.
