June 8, 2021

On June 3^rd, the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) Women’s Conference was held. The panelists included Associate Professor Jessica Pan (NUS Department of Economics), chief executive of Wildtype Media Group Dr Juliana Chan, Nee Soon GRC MP Carrie Tan, and Group Head of DBS Bank Ms Tan Su Shan. The discussion centered around the need for equal work and pay.

One topic of debate was the gender pay gap, which tends to be exacerbated when women have children. A/P Pan suggested that children impose different demands on a woman’s time as compared with a man’s time. Yet even though the economic roles of men and women have largely converged, for most women the gender pay gap remains and will not close even ten years after the birth of the first child.

A/P Pan noted that potential policy responses could be to allow for more parental leave and flexible work arrangements, but may not work if employers view these as too costly to implement. Instead, she believes that as already observed in European countries, paternity leave provisions may be more suitable as they directly address the traditional division of labour and may thus help to speed up the shift in perspective of gender norms. However, the other panelists also pointed out that these societal norms are ingrained and will not be easily changed.

Ms Tan commented that childcare issues are the most common barrier to employment. She indicated how in some cases, a mother with better job or wage prospects than the father still needs to stay home to care for children due to entrenched gender norms. To counter the issue of women not earning much because they are saddled with caregiving duties, she proposed an initiative called Carefare. Carefare acts as a parallel to the current Workfare Income Supplement scheme. This scheme  supports low-wage workers to help women who do not meet the eligibility criteria for Workfare because they do not have enough money to make MediSave contributions.

Lastly, Dr Chan also mentioned that women need to play an equal role in areas related to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) to create a sustainable, productive future economy rather than continuing to perpetuate the stereotype of women being better at soft sciences and humanities and men at hard sciences and technology.

Read the article here.