Moving towards greater equality

Govt to conduct review of women’s issues to inculcate mindset change

THE government is embarking on a comprehensive review of issues affecting women to bring about a mindset change on values like gender equality and respect for women.

The review will engage and work with partners from the people and private sectors as well as women’s and youth groups, said Minister for Home Affairs and Law K. Shanmugam.

He said it will be led by three female political office holders, namely, Minister of State for Education and Social and Family Development Sun Xueling, Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth and Trade and Industry Low Yen Ling, and parliamentary secretary for Health Rahayu Mahzam.

The ideas and suggestions gathered through these dialogues and discussions will be tabled as a White Paper in Parliament in the first half of next year, Shanmugam said.

Speaking at the start of a virtual dialogue yesterday, he said while Singapore has taken great strides to level the playing field for women, gender equality remains a work in progress.

To tackle the cultural, social and structural hurdles that still remain, the government will be collecting and consolidating feedback as part of this review, he added.

The virtual dialogue session yesterday, titled “Conversations on Women Development”, is the first of a series of upcoming engagement sessions to collect feedback and recommendations on the topic.

“The White Paper will aim to address women-related issues that Singaporeans are concerned with. It will aim to be a further road map for progress, a pathway towards greater gender equality,” said Shanmugam in a keynote speech to an audience of about 60 participants from youth groups and women organisations.

He said women in Singapore have advanced in areas like the workforce, politics and education, but he added that society must go beyond these matrices of performance in this areas.

“Every boy and girl must grow up imbibing the value of gender equality. They need to be taught from a very early age that boys and girls are to be treated equally, and very importantly, with respect.

“It has to be a deep mindset change,” he said.

“When you internalise that, what then happens? Society’s whole outlook on a variety of gender issues are much easier to change.”

Issues like sexual violence, voyeurism, and differential treatment in the office based on gender should be considered “a deep violation of fundamental values”, Shanmugam added.

The review also tackle issues at home, such as protecting women from family and intimate partner violence, he said.

It will also examine the way women are thought about in the school and workplace, and tackle the need for equal opportunities and protection from sexual harassment, assault and workplace discrimination, he added.

The review will also examine issues in the community, like gender stereotyping and how women are addressed in the manner of speech or way of thinking, he said.

Shanmugam said the spate of recent offences against women in the news had set him thinking about whether there is a more philosophical way of thinking about gender equality. The offences, he said, were a series of voyeurism cases in the universities, and the case relating to the National University of Singapore dentistry student who physically assaulted his former girlfriend after she refused to get back together with him.

The 23-year-old student was sentenced to a 12-day short detention order, a day reporting order of five months, and an order to complete 80 hours of community service.

The sentencing drew public ire in July, and sparked online petitions and women’s rights groups questioned if the sentence fit the crime.

While recent changes to the law have provided for stiffer penalties for offences against women and the vulnerable, this is “the relatively easier parts”, said Shanmugam.

The punishment for sexual violence for example shouldn’t just be approached simply as penalising an offence, but it must also be seen as penalising a “gross violation of fundamental values”, he added.

They (children) need to be taught from a very early age that boys and girls are to be treated equally, and very importantly, with respect.

K. Shanmugam