Women in the workforce can fuel Asia's growth in post-Covid economy, says McKinsey partner

As a coronavirus-fuelled recession looms, Asian economies are sitting on a powerful and underutilised engine of growth that could help them pull out of the downturn: female workers.

Management consultants McKinsey & Company found that if Asia-Pacific economies advance women's equality in the workplace it could mean an extra US$4.3 trillion or 12 per cent of their collective annual GDP over the next 10 years.

This figure does not even assume full equality with men, merely that all countries meet best-in-Asia levels on several measures of workforce participation.

Kweilin Ellingrud, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, who instigated research into gender parity and co-authored the 2015 Power of Parity report. Photo: Handout

"This is such a big growth opportunity that it cannot be ignored, particularly now as we head into economic turmoil," said Kweilin Ellingrud, the senior partner who instigated the research into the economic impact of gender inequality in nearly 100 countries and co-authored the Power of Parity report in 2015.

But when McKinsey refreshed that research last year, it found scant global progress in its Gender Parity Score (GPS), devised to track 15 indicators of equality in both work and society on a scale of 0 to 1, with 1 being perfect parity.

The aggregate GPS for gender equality worldwide increased by just 1 percentage point. Asia-Pacific still lags behind the West at 0.58 overall, while North America and Europe each stand at 0.76.

The Philippines has the highest score in Asia at 0.71, with China at 0.66, India at 0.50 and Singapore, 0.68.

Ellingrud, a 43-year-old Minneapolis-based consultant, is concerned that global progress may slow even further because women dominate the part-time and service jobs being slashed in the coronavirus lockdowns.

She proposed the research because she "felt we were talking about gender equality with facts and figures, but not convincing largely male business and political leaders about what is the economic case and why they should care".

A woman walks on a pedestrian bridge in Wuhan, China. Photo: AFP

Asia's largest potential gender equality growth dividends would come from China and India, but workplaces in both countries have not caught up with society in treating women more equally, she said. "India has an overall score of 0.50 but its equality in work ranks at 0.30 and its equality in society stands at 0.64."

There is also a bottleneck in getting more women into management roles, said Ellingrud.

"In China, women make up 51 per cent of entry-level professionals, but by the time you get to middle management and vice-president level, it is 22 per cent. And women are 11 per cent of senior managers and 10 per cent of board members."

The drop-off is even steeper in India, where 4 per cent of senior managers and 1 per cent of board members are female, while in Japan, just 1 per cent of senior management and 3 per cent of boards are. Contrast this with the United States, where one in four senior managers is female.

"So addressing gender equality at work is priority number one," Ellingrud concluded. "That is the biggest gap for China and that is dramatically the biggest gap for India."

An Indian woman waits to get a medical certificate before she is allowed to travel to her home village. Many informal workers lost their jobs during lockdown. Photo: EPA-EFE

There are other stumbling blocks for women trying to begin or advance a career, including taking on the lion's share of unpaid care work such as cooking, cleaning and childcare.

"Around the world, women do three times as much unpaid care work as men, and in India it's 10 times as much. In the US, we're at about two times as much," said Ellingrud.

These imbalances are being exacerbated by the pandemic as women have most part time jobs, and tend to stay out of employment longer if they lose these jobs.

"And as schools shut down, we have women juggling even more, with kids at home and potentially home schooling. A disproportionate share of that work tends to fall on women."

Yet Ellingrud remains optimistic, citing progress in the last five years such as improved maternal mortality, especially in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India and Nepal. Education has improved too, with female tertiary enrolment up across Asia.

She also has a personal motivation to keep pressing for gender parity: her three daughters, aged four to seven, whom she hopes "are never held back by their gender, and always view it as an asset".

"Hopefully, we'll have a more equal society that closes all these gaps in their lifetimes."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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