Extraordinary Women - Singapore

By Karen Lee

The premise for the book is Karens personal observation of the state of gender inequality which still exists between men and women in Singapore, a country which has achieved the status of a first-world economy. Karen further explores the dire state of gender inequality in Singapore in her book.
From her first job with a large electronics conglomerate, Karen witnessed the apparent inequality between men and women in the workplace. From her observation, it seems extremely difficult to break the gender impediment between men and women in the workplace and even at home.
Karen notices that most female senior managers have to content with working in more auxiliary departments such as administration, accounting and human resource. As for the strategic positions in procurement, business development, sales, strategic planning and legal departments, most, if not all of these positions are likely to be helmed by male employees. Furthermore, men are expected to excel in their career, but if a woman focuses her time on building her career, her aspirations are viewed negatively by society because traditionalists still believe that women should take care of the household, whilst the men should bring home the bacon.
This book, which has been simmering for the past two years, encompasses a series of interviews with strong and successful women who have been able overcome the gender barrier and achieve work-life balance. Karen hopes that Extraordinary Women Singapore will inspire men and women to work together towards achieving greater work-life balance and strive to break the invisible brick wall of gender inequality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: May 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482831474

Karen Lee

Bergson's mother, Karen Lee (she/her), is a pharmacist who enjoys medical writing, mentoring others, and spending time with her perfect family of 4.

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Copyright © 2015 by Karen Lee.

Zoe Tay’s picture—Photo Courtesy of Wee Khim Photography

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Contents

Chapter I Ms Claire Chiang

Chapter II Ms Claressa Monteiro

Chapter III Dr. Irene Chua

Chapter IV Dr Karen Soh

Chapter V Dr Loretta Chen

Chapter VI Ms Marie Choo

Chapter VII Ms Tan Kheng Hua

Chapter VIII Ms Wong Li Lin

Chapter IX Ms Xiang Yun

Chapter X Ms Yap Shu Mei

Chapter XI Ms Zoe Tay

FOREWORD

Gender stereotypes.

What is so typical of a gender that makes people form firm illusions or prejudice, one against another? Do not get me wrong, I have nothing but admiration for any gender who makes their own honest living and in so doing, keeps their own dignity and earns their own respect. The situation that is baffling me is the traditional prejudice which former generations have instilled in women and that gender inequality starkly exists in many first-world societies even till today. Moving forward, there are also stifling questions as to how women can achieve equal standing with their male counterpart.

I came across an article in Vogue magazine entitled "Breaking The Silicon Ceiling", which, as the title suggests is about women engineers in the Silicon Valley. The story is narrated by Tracy Chou, a computer scientist working with Pinterest. Prior to that, she was on internships at Facebook and Google before taking on a foundational role at Quora.

For many years, Tracy had been intensely aware of the complaints about technology firms employing fewer and fewer female engineers. She had no concrete proof of the figures even though it was in plain sight and decided to deal head-on with the nagging problem in technology firms, which was the severe shortage of women in the ranks of engineering roles. At the annual gathering of female technologists called the Grace Hopper Celebration, Tracy brought to the problem of missing data of women in engineering roles and she wrote a blog post on medium.com to call for all technology companies to submit the number of female engineers employed by their companies respectively in the Silicon Valley.

The numbers that came into Tracy’s database were atrocious and unacceptable. At Facebook, women made up only 17 percent of their tech team. At Facebook and Yahoo, the numbers of women in their tech team were at an even lower at 15 percent. The atrocious numbers in the tech industry are much worse off than the numbers in the finance and entertainment sectors.

Sociologists try to make sense of the low numbers and they asked distinctive and pertinent questions like, Are women less intelligent than men? No. Are they less responsible in their jobs? No. Do women have less aptitude than their counterparts? No. Do women have less empathy, less ability, to comprehend their work tasks at hand, to answer to customer queries, to be less competent employees as men? No. Vivek Wadwa, an entrepreneur researcher and now a fellow with Stanford University, interviewed hundreds of women in the technology sector in preparation for his new book "Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology". The dismal number of female programmers and engineers in top technology firms caught him by surprise and he was shocked with the pathetic number of women employed by technology firms and the C-level Executives who are not even concerned with such disparity.

Sheryl Sanberg’s book "Lean In" was a bold and stark reminder to all women that they should lean in, step up and take leadership roles. She reiterates that it is not alright to be discounted by men at work and at Board meetings. Women should cultivate self-confidence and not back down when a difficult project is given to them. For decades, men were considered the provider, decisive and driver. On the other hand, women are characterized as being the caregivers, sensitive and communal. Therefore, if a woman climbs the career ladder, focusing on building her career and gaining power at their workplace, they are frown upon. This is the old-fashioned stereotypical expectations of women.

In recent times, many celebrities have also stepped up to call for equality between two genders and one of them is Emma Watson, who shot to fame with her character Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films. Watson is also a goodwill ambassador for the UN and she urges more men and boys to take a stand and support women’s rights. Emma Watson also used the International Women’s Day to act as a catalyst for the HeForShe campaign which was launched in September last year and inspires men and boys to join the cause to fight for equal rights. To date, there are about 240,000 men have pledged their commitment online in accordance to the HeForShe website and they include U.S. President Barack Obama and actor Matt Damon. The HeForShe website also targets to mobilise one billion men and boys by July this year.

On our sunny island, women particularly those who are in the workforce, are faced with balancing their traditional and modern-day roles in Singaporean society and economy. Firstly, Singapore’s society expects women to become creative and prolific corporate workers and they are also expected to play the role of traditional women in the household, especially as a wife and mother. Secondly, Singaporean women are conflicted between work and family, which poses as the greatest challenge for women in