Gender bonds as an investment in equality

EACH year, International Women's Day presents an opportunity to reflect on the progress of women and girls in the preceding year. The 2020 Global Gender Gap Report published by the World Economic Forum reports a sobering trend: that women's economic participation has been hampered by multiple roadblocks. More alarming is that financial inequalities among the sexes are widening. There is a stark gender pay gap because men continue to call the shots, dominating leadership and senior positions in the workplace.

Defined as the difference between the average hourly earnings of male and female full-time employees, the gender pay gap is measured at either the national or workplace level. Among Asian countries, the gender pay gap varies considerably. But on the whole, many Asean countries have a better track record than those in Europe. In Singapore, the gender pay gap stands at 6 per cent, compared to an average of 16 per cent for the European Union over the last decade.

In spite of improvements in certain EU countries, the gap was found to decrease by only 1 percentage point over the last seven years. On the other hand, it took 18 years for Singapore to narrow that gap from 8.8 per cent in 2002 to 6 per cent in 2018. Even the Philippines, a country which has earned the title of the most gender-equal nation in Asia for various parameters, suffers from a gender pay gap with men earning 15.7 per cent more on average than women. Interestingly, only a handful of countries have displayed a gap in favour of women: Bangladesh is a classic case with women earning 4.7 per cent more on average than men in 2017, largely arising from its garment revolution spearheaded by women workers.