Brian Henderson, co-founder of The Women’s Foundation Male Allies initiative in Hong Kong, on how a focus on equality and merit are traps that many don’t recognise and what we should really embrace is equity
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day, #embraceequity, is very appropriate and timely. Equality and merit in particular, where focus is often placed, are not delivering equity because they are often not as objective and fair as they seem.
Inequitable outcomes are very clear from the data:
- 30 percent of Hong Kong working women drop out of the workforce due to childcare and/or eldercare responsibilities
- 58 percent of carers are female
- More than 50 percent of employers surveyed in Hong Kong stated they would not hire women with children
- Single mothers outnumber single fathers by three to one
- The pay gender gap in managerial positions is 28 percent for those aged 45 to 54
Sadly, many of these statistics deteriorated as a result of the global pandemic.
The impact of Covid-19
The pandemic adversely impacted women and girls. Challenges women faced due to Covid-19 included caring for sick relatives; additional childcare due to school closures; reduced domestic worker availability; job losses in lower-income, female-dominated sectors such as travel, tourism, retail, restaurants and bars; and, tragically, increased domestic violence and child abuse of which women and girls are the vast majority of victims.
There are many reasons for these differential impacts on women, but it is clear that more needs to be done to achieve more equitable outcomes.
Let’s explore two reasons we are falling short.
The equality trap
But we treat everyone equally, what’s the problem? Isn’t that the only ‘fair’ way to do it?
Equality is about treating everyone the same way. Equity is about addressing individual needs so everyone has a fair and equitable opportunity to achieve similar outcomes. You may have seen the cartoon of the hiring manager saying to the bird, the monkey and the rhino: ‘Whoever gets to the top of the tree gets the job’. This is equality, but it clearly disadvantages the poor rhino.
Now, consider the impact of Covid-19 on employment. Let’s assume employers made redundancies equally across their male and female employees—equality of treatment. But, many more women worked in sectors affected economically by Covid-19 than men; more women than men in these sectors were already close to the poverty line; three times more of them were single parents; many more were also child and elder caregivers; and lack of alternative employment opportunities put them into financial crisis. It is clear that greater hardship was imposed on more women than their male counterparts, even though they were all treated equally by their employers. This is an example of equal treatment resulting in unequal outcomes.
Among professional women and men in similar jobs, women also disproportionately carry caregiving responsibilities. This gives men an advantage as they can dedicate the time that women spend caregiving to their career or to self-care that enables them to do their job better. This tends to result in men progressing further and faster than women. Again, equal treatment but unequal outcomes.
Treating people equally is not always fair or equitable unless different situations and impacts are taken into account and addressed.