none
Permanent Secretary for Labour & Welfare Annie Tam
The HKSAR has all along been implementing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in accordance with the provisions of the Basic Law and local laws. The Government remains fully committed to implementing the provisions of Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The Basic Law and the Bill of Rights Ordinance protect the fundamental rights of all people in the HKSAR. We have brought into force four pieces of anti-discrimination legislation, which are the Sex Discrimination Ordinance, the Family Status Discrimination Ordinance, the Disability Discrimination Ordinance and the Race Discrimination Ordinance.
The HKSAR is an international business and financial centre. We now have a population of more than 7 million with slightly more than half of them being female. Women also live longer than men; on average men and women in Hong Kong are expected to live 81 and 86 years respectively.
With equal rights of access to 12 years of free education in the HKSAR, more than 76.5% of females aged 15 or above in the HKSAR have attained secondary education or above, and females now account for more than half of our student enrolments in undergraduate programmes as well as over 60% of the students in taught postgraduate programmes.
In the HKSAR, equal employment opportunities for women and men are protected by the Sex Discrimination Ordinance. Female employees are provided under the Employment Ordinance with maternity protection, comprising paid maternity leave as well as employment protection during pregnancy. Women in Hong Kong are not only free to choose to work in the labour market; more of them are taking high positions.
Among senior management positions in private businesses, more than 30% are held by women. Among our 15 Secretaries and Directors of Bureaux, a woman holds the office of the Chief Secretary for Administration, who is the leading Principal Official in the HKSAR Government. In the civil service, half of our 18 permanent secretaries, including myself, and around one-third of all directorate officers are women, and in the Judiciary more than one-fourth of our judges and judicial officers are women.
Women's employment
According to a recent Manpower Projection conducted by the HKSAR Government, the local female manpower supply is projected to grow from 1.55 million in 2012 to 1.72 million in 2022. During the same period, women's share of the local workforce is projected to edge up from 44% to 46.7%, with the female labour force participation rate increasing slightly from 49.6% to 50.5%.
Many women take on for themselves the role of carers in the family. The HKSAR Government fully respects the choice of women and appreciates that some women would prefer taking care of families to pursuing a career. However, we note that a considerable number of female homemakers would be willing to work given suitable employment opportunities while Hong Kong is projected to require more manpower to drive our economic growth.
To enable women to pursue employment and careers of their choice, we are now working proactively to facilitate employment of women through a range of measures such as planning holistically for better community child care provision, after-school child care and elderly services; more family-friendly workplaces; more part-time jobs; and better retraining. In this regard, we are sensitive to the need for specific measures to meet the special needs of single parents, women newly arrived in Hong Kong and women with disabilities. I would like to quote some specific measures:
(a) We are preparing to introduce a Low Income Working Family Allowance to help low-income breadwinners and their families. We will adopt a much lower working hours threshold for breadwinners who are single parents to meet their special needs;
(b) As one of the family-friendly measures, we have earlier this year introduced into the Legislative Council a Bill which seeks to provide eligible working fathers with three days' paid paternity leave. The Bill is at present under the scrutiny of the Legislative Council; and
(c) We will continue to implement the Statutory Minimum Wage, to provide a wage floor to forestall excessively low wages. This measure has proven to be effective in encouraging more women to pursue employment.
More importantly, the Government will continue to develop our economy and create more employment opportunities which meet our many development needs.
Foreign domestic helpers
We are grateful for the contributions made by some 329,000 foreign domestic helpers, who are mostly women, currently working in Hong Kong. They assist local women in taking care of their families and also help release more local women to pursue employment and careers.
The foreign domestic helpers are now working in more than 260,000 families in Hong Kong. The majority of employers treat their foreign domestic helpers well, and most foreign domestic helpers enjoy a good relationship with their employers.
The HKSAR Government is committed to protecting the rights and interest of our foreign domestic helpers through a multi-pronged approach:
(a) Hong Kong is one of the few places where the local law provides that foreign domestic helpers are able to enjoy a range of labour rights and benefits, such as statutory holidays, a weekly rest day, as well as maternity protection and more, and foreign domestic helpers, in addition, are protected by a Government-prescribed Standard Employment Contract which provides for, among others, the Minimum Allowable Wage. Our law further provides that foreign domestic helpers, like any local person, are protected against abuse. All employment agencies are also required to be licensed under our law;
(b) We consider it important to make sure that the foreign domestic helpers, their employers, their employment agencies, the local community as a whole and the foreign domestic helper exporting countries are all fully aware of the rights of foreign domestic helpers. We have been actively stepping up our efforts in this regard. For instance, we have established regular liaison mechanisms with the relevant foreign consulates in Hong Kong, with a view to tackling issues like the heavy training and agency fees that some foreign domestic helpers may have committed to pay even before their arrival in Hong Kong; we have been launching ongoing publicity and educational programmes to improve foreign domestic helpers' own awareness of their rights; and we are also considering the introduction of a Code of Practice to better regulate the operations of the employment agencies; and
(c) We encourage foreign domestic helpers to come forward and file reports if they are abused or if their rights are violated, or both. They, same as local workers, enjoy equal access to the courts and legal aid. The relevant authorities treat these cases seriously, take prompt action to investigate the cases, and, if there is sufficient evidence, institute prosecutions and other actions against their employers or employment agencies.
Women's Commission
The Women's Commission, or the WoC for short, was set up in 2001 to advise the HKSAR Government on women's issues.
On gender mainstreaming, or GM, the WoC has developed a GM Checklist and this has been applied to more than 50 policy and programme areas in Hong Kong. The WoC has recently advised us that the time is ripe to institutionalise GM in major policies and initiatives across the board. The second area is appointment to government advisory and statutory bodies, or ASBs. Taking into account the advice of the WoC, the Government introduced, in January 2004, the first gender benchmark of 25% as a working target for appointments to ASBs. The Government, on the advice of the WoC, raised the gender benchmark from 25 per cent to 30% in June 2010. As at the end of April 2014, 1 963 (32.3%) of the appointed non-official members in 418 ASBs were women. The WoC has recently advised us to consider increasing the 30% benchmark to a higher figure. The Government is now proactively considering the WoC's advice in these two areas.
The Government cherishes its partnership with women's groups, and with the whole community, men and women. Acting in concert, we stand ready to chart new courses to further promote the realisation of women's due status, rights and opportunities in all aspects of life, in a continuing process of faithfully implementing Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women as applied to the HKSAR.
Permanent Secretary for Labour & Welfare Annie Tam gave these remarks at the consideration held by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women on the HKSAR’s third report under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, in Geneva.
