Top three items on women’s wish list

I AM part of an informal support group made up of women from the corporate sector. We are kind of like an AA (alcoholic anonymous) group, except that we’re here to support each other in an increasingly gender-contentious world rather than to fight addiction. In conjunction with International Women’s Day (IWD), we collectively asked ourselves: “Okay, we’ve got the world listening. Now, what do women really want?”

For brevity’s sake, here are our top three “women in the workplace” wish list and we hope legislators, regulators and decision-makers would quickly catch on.

First is the statutory right to flexible working arrangements. While this would greatly benefit both men and women, it would be especially meaningful for working women who tend to find themselves in a constant tug of war between fulfilling care-giving duties and pursuing their careers with fervour.

There are some progressive organisations that are already offering flexible working options, but this won’t be enough as long as the country is still experiencing a significant volume of brain drain due to women leaving the workforce because of work cultures that are not family-friendly.

Secondly, there should be a far-reaching and sustainable solution for women beyond just offering crèches.

While childcare facilities are great for working young mothers, it is transient. Truth is, most women are bound to different dependants at various stages of their lives, for example older children, elderly parents or special children.

In this case, a dependant care subsidy package might be more suitable than just providing physi- cal facilities and infrastructure that only cater to specific groups.

Finally, entice women to come back to work in the same way as the returning experts programme. It’s almost ironic that we’re pumping in so much resources to attract our talents overseas to return while ignoring those at home! Whether it’s a tax break, bridging courses to equip women for leadership roles or business seed funds, there should be a diverse range of infrastructure and services specifi- cally allocated for women to give them an extra edge in a gender-unbalanced reality.

It is worth noting, at least in my personal experience and the organisation that I work in, that there seems to be a sharp drop in female presence at mid and senior level leadership positions.

This could be the indicator of an overshadowed group of women who would perhaps benefit from the incentives mentioned earlier, especially since we are nearing the 2020 deadline set for meeting the goal of 30% participation of women in the board of directors of public listed companies.

The recurrent keyword for our workplace wish list has persistently been “flexibility”, driven by an overarching desire to instil harmony between our diverse roles in society.

This, too, is echoed by this year’s IWD theme, “#BalanceforBetter”. Ultimately, if society at large is listening keenly, more initiatives would be driven towards creating a supportive, nurturing environment for women to thrive in, instead of feeling like they’re in a constant state of compromise between their family life and careers. Over to you, legislators, regulators and decision-makers.